Henry VI, Part I. Act 2, scene 2.
Before I climbed aboard my Arab mare, I pulled a piece of paper from my coat pocket and gave it to the conductor.
“Would you see that this is telegraphed to the Dispatch in Saint Louis, sir?”
The conductor blinked, swallowed, and said: “Certainly, Mr. … James?”
That got Jesse to howling so hard, I thought he would taste gravel.
“Have a good day,” was all I could think to say. I mounted the mare, and we rode out of the sleepy settlement.
The conductor proved a man of his word, and the St. Louis Dispatch published the article, which I have kept all these years and now paste below.
The Most Daring Robbery On Record
The southbound train on the Iron Mountain railroad was robbed here this morning by five heavily armed men, and robbed of ________ dollars. The robbers arrived at the station a few minutes before the arrival of the train, and arrested the agent, put him under guard, and then threw the train on the switch. The robbers are all large men, none of them under six feet tall. They were all masked, and stared in a southerly direction after they had robbed the train, all mounted on fine-blooded horses. There is a hell of excitement in this part of the country.
* * * * *
We rode northwest, of course, and not all of us stood six feet tall. I was just shy of that height myself.
Turned out, though, that everyone in the world thought the article had been written by one Jesse James. I guess he got the last laugh, though we made off with $3,000.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ah, but what we—what I—failed to understand was that robbing trains changed things for the James-Younger Gang. We had robbed an express car, in Adair and at Gads Hill, and express companies frowned upon such actions. They sought out the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and that slippery Scottish spy, Allan Pinkerton, and his stealthy agents made it their personal ambition to catch or kill us.
Of course, we didn’t think too much about Pinkertons as 1874 rolled along. Jesse married his cousin Zee in the parlor of her sister’s home in Kansas City. Annie Ralston and Frank eloped. Jim kept playing patty-cake with Cora McNeill. Which got me brooding, drinking, and moaning, though never in front of the boys. I did ride by the Daniel house in Harrisonville one night. I guess Lizzie had brought the piano from the old Wayside Rest with her, because music hummed out of the window, and I saw her shadow through the curtains while she sat, fingers tickling ivories and ebonies. Her voice remained so lovely as she sang “In the Sweet By and By.”
“She sounds heavenly, doesn’t she?” said a voice in the dark.
My head turned, while my right hand reached for a rimfire Smith & Wesson in my coat pocket just before I saw the badge gleaming from the street lamp. The constable grinned up at me, and I relaxed, returning my hands to rest on the saddle horn.
“She does indeed,” I said.
His head cocked, and he wet his lips. “Do I know you, sir?”
“No, sir.” I studied his pockmarked, boyish face. I doubted if he was twenty years old. “I don’t recognize you, officer, and unless you come from Sherman, Texas, I doubt if we have met.”
“Texas … by thunder. You are far from home.”
Tears probably welled in my eyes. The girl I loved, who I had known pretty much all my life, played piano in a fine wooden house. Strangers lived in the house we had owned, two blocks east and west. The livery Dick had owned had been torn down, and a wagon yard put up in its place. My father’s mercantile was now a grocery.
“Yes,” I managed to say. “I am far from home. Heading to Kansas City.”
“It’s a long way to be riding, sir, at night.”
“I like the night,” I said. Reaching down, I shook the lawman’s hand. “I am Captain J.C. King.” I would use that alias a few more times over my career. I hooked my thumb toward the Daniel home. Lizzie had moved on to play “The Ship That Never Returned.”
“Who is that angel?” I asked.
“That’s Mrs. Elizabeth Daniel, Captain King. Her husband is an attorney here in Harrisonville … for now. I dare say he’ll be a judge before long, maybe even congressman or mayor.”
I nodded. “I might have need of a good judge, or lawyer. Not so certain about a politician, though.”
The policeman laughed. Picking up the reins I had dropped over Jo Shelby’s neck, I smiled: “Mr. Daniel is a lucky man. Nice chatting with you, sir.”
“Safe journey, Captain King.” I kicked the Arabian into a walk,and rode out of town, the melody of Lizzie’s fast-beat tune, and her voice, following me into the darkness.
“Only one more trip,” said a gallant seaman,
As he kissed his weeping wife,
“Only one more bag of the golden treasure
And ’twill last us all through life.
Then I’ll spend my days in my cozy cottage
And enjoy the rest I’ve earned.”
But alas! poor man! For he sail’d commander
Of the ship that never returned.
* * * * *
I rode back to St. Clair County to visit my brothers. Bob kept talking about starting a farm, and Jim swore that he was through with robbing and stealing. I didn’t blame them. Of course, you could not talk John out of following the trail I had blazed for him.
“There’s some good land at Hot Springs,” I told Jim and Bob. We sat on the porch of our uncle’s house, rocking in the cool but pleasant March air. About that time, we heard the clopping of hoofs, and immediately we filled our hands with revolvers, waiting, watching, breathing slowly. One horse. The rider appeared at the edge of the woods, reining in immediately, and bringing up both of his hands.
“Bud?” he called out. “John?”
“Clell Miller,” I said softly, keeping my hand on my revolver butt as I raised my voice and said: “Come along, Clell.”
Lather coated his buckskin mare, and Clell looked worn out himself. “Buck sent me,” Clell said. “Some trouble down at their farm.”
“They all right?” John asked.
Clell Miller grinned. “Yeah. They’re fine. But a damned Pinkerton detective sure ain’t.”
* * * * *
The Pinkerton man’s name was Joseph W. Whicher, and if every detective were as stupid as this fool, Pinkerton would have gone out of business well before 1874. The way Clell Miller told us the story, Whicher came up to the James farm pretending to be a laborer looking for work. Farmworkers usually have calloused hands. Whicher didn’t.
Later, we learned that Whicher had chatted with two lawmen in Liberty after arriving from Chicago. The lawmen warned him not to try anything, but Whicher must have considered himself immortal. Which he was not.
From Liberty, he caught the train to Kearney, and put his plan into motion. The next morning, a peddler found his body along the Lexington-Liberty fork, with a note pinned to his chest: This to all detectives.
Well, Clell didn’t say who murdered the spy, and I didn’t ask. Jesse would be my guess, but like Sheriff Alexander Doniphan warned Whicher back in Liberty: “Son, Mrs. James herself will murder you quick as Frank or Jesse would.”
* * * * *
Having the Pinkertons in our midst did put a caution in my bones. Jim pushed us, so I agreed to take John and Bob with me to Arkansas, maybe find some good bottomland and get Bob set up farming. John, though, reared his mule head.
“I ain’t running from no Yankee spy,” he said. “There’s a dance next week in La Cygne, and I aim to hear some fiddle music.”
Jim shook his head. “If it’s fiddling you want to hear, I’ll oblige you.” Jim reached for his fiddle.
“You saw real good, Jim, but there ain’t no gals here to cut the rug with. And they’s plenty in La Cygne. There’s plenty of la sin in La Cygne.” He laughed at his joke.
We argued
, but John could be a hard rock when he felt ornery. Eventually, we reached a compromise. Jim would ride with John to La Cygne, a fun little town with a handful of saloons just across the Kansas line. They’d spend the night with Uncle John and Aunt Hannah in their cabin a few miles outside of Monegaw.
I took Bob with me, but we found no farmland. A few days later, Jim and John rode to La Cygne, did their share of dancing, returned to Monegaw, danced some more in the hotel—Jim playing the fiddle—and stopped at Theodrick Snuffer’s place on the Old Timber Road north of Roscoe. That’s where they were when the Pinkerton man and a deputy sheriff showed up.
When they heard the horses, my brothers climbed into the attic and crawled toward the porch where they could spy on the strangers through a small crack. Old Man Snuffer walked to the door.
“ ’Morning,” Deputy Ed Daniels said.
“Howdy,” said Old Man Snuffer.
“We kind of lost our way,” said the other man, and he pushed back his linen duster. “I’m looking for cattle to buy, and the preacher in Monegaw suggested that I find the Widow Sims.”
“You ridin’ along, Sheriff, to make sure the widow don’t cheat this stranger?” Old Man Snuffer grinned.
So did Ed Daniels, but it wasn’t a fun grin. Sweat beaded his forehead, and it was only March.
“Well, I don’t get this way much,” the deputy said. “Ran into this gent, and thought I could find my way. But …” He shrugged.
“Sure.” Theodrick Snuffer gave directions, watched them mount their horses, and ride through the gate. By the time the strangers and the deputy were out of sight, Jim and John had climbed out of the attic.
“They’re packing a lot of guns for cattle buyers,” John said. “The Widow Sims ain’t that dangerous.”
“No wonder they got lost,” Old Man Snuffer said. “Can’t follow directions worth spit. Told ’em to ride to the Old Road and turn east. They’re goin’ northwest, up toward Monegaw.”
“They’re detectives!” John shouted.
“Let them be,” Jim said. “They’re gone.”
“You can’t let detectives alone.”
“Maybe Ed Daniels doesn’t have the brains of a turnip,” Jim said, and filled his cup with coffee.
“Maybe you’re yellow,” John said.
Now, I wish Jim had done what I would have and just laid John out with a right to that hard noggin of his. But Jim relented because John had a point. The stranger didn’t act like cattlemen, the sheriff’s deputy couldn’t follow directions, and both men packed a lot of iron for cattlemen.
John said he was going after those two no matter what Jim did, leaving Jim with no choice. My brothers got their horses out of the barn and rode after the strangers.
They caught up with them just before Old Timber Road and Chalk Road intersect. Only now, there were three men. I guess one of the sneaks hid in the timber while Daniels and the make-believe cattle buyer checked out the Snuffer farm. That convinced my brothers that, indeed, these boys were lawdogs. Seeing my brothers, or, rather, their guns, the newcomer put the spurs to his mount and took off across a cornfield.
“Stop!” The coward didn’t listen to Jim’s cry, so Jim fired at him, but missed. That yellow-backed Pinkerton man did not slow his horse down even when he leaped the ditch and entered the woods. By then, though, John had trained both barrels of the shotgun he had borrowed from Old Man Snuffer at the other two men.
“Drop the hardware, gents.”
Cocking his .44, Jim eased his horse closer to the deputy and the stranger.
“The widow lives down that way.” Jim swung down from the saddle and picked up the gun belt the stranger had dropped.
“Oh,” said Ed Daniels. “Thanks.”
“What is this?” Jim held up the revolver he had pulled from the stranger’s holster.
“It’s a Trantor,” the man said nervously, while he kept glancing at the fields and the woods, as if praying his colleague would ride back to the rescue, leading a whole regiment of bluebelly cavalry.
“A Trantor?”
“Made in England.”
Jim shoved the big .43- caliber pistol in his waistband. “You buy cattle in England, do you?”
“They’re damned detectives!” John snapped.
“No …” the deputy said, swallowing and nodding at the stranger. “He’s from Osceola.”
“I’ve been to Osceola,” John said, “and I never seen this … Pinkerton man.”
“I tell you, John … this is …” began Daniels.
“You know me?” John trained the shotgun on the deputy.
Jim was looking at the lawman, too, and the pretend cattle buyer took advantage, drew a No. 2 Smith & Wesson, and put a bullet through John’s neck.
John almost fell from his horse, but, tougher than a cob, he squeezed the first trigger of the shotgun. Buckshot tore into the Pinkerton man’s arm and shoulder. The man screamed, dropped his hideaway pistol, yet somehow managed to stay on his frightened horse as it galloped east toward the Widow Sims’ place. Jim fired, too, but missed. John, who by all rights should have been dead, spurred his horse and chased after the fleeing Pinkerton man. While this was happening—faster than I can tell the story—the deputy spurred his horse, forcing Jim to dive out of the path. Coming up to his knees, Jim cocked his revolver, steadied his arm, squeezed the trigger, and Ed Daniels let out a gasp and crashed to the ground.
“John!” Jim screamed, but my brother was pursuing his killer.
Quickly, Jim glanced at the deputy, realized he was dead, mounted his horse, and rode after John and the Pinkerton man.
A branch knocked the wounded detective from his saddle, and he landed on the Old Road near the farms of two colored men. Sitting up, the Pinkerton man tried to stand, but John pulled the shotgun’s second trigger. The blast slammed the detective against a tree.
Turning his horse, John tried to ride back to Jim, blood pulsing from his neck. The horse stopped, and John lacked the strength to kick it into a walk. The shotgun slipped from his hand. He tried to speak as Jim leaped from his horse. All that came out of my brother’s mouth, though, were gurgles. Before Jim could reach my dying brother, John slid from the saddle, fell against the rails to one of the Negroes’ hog pen, flipped over, and landed in the muck.
Jim climbed over the rails, looked down, and cursed. Our hotheaded brother, poor John, stared up at him, but no longer saw anything in this world. Dropping into the pen, Jim collected John’s revolvers, his billfold, and a pocket watch.
A Negro had come to the edge of the pen. Jim glanced up at him and tossed the farmer one of John’s pistols.
“See that my brother gets a decent burial,” Jim said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
They buried John under a fine cedar tree at the Snuffer place. The detective John had shot lived long enough to be carted down to Roscoe, where he gave a statement. He died a few days later.
The war had killed my father, and it wound up killing my mother, my sister Duck, and now poor John. And I did not get to see any of them buried.
Jim had seen enough. He left his blood, left sweet Cora, even left his fiddle, and took a train bound for California. Bob turned bitter, and befriended Jesse James—which grieved my stomach, but … well … my kid brother turned twenty- one years old in 1874. And I’d never been able to rein him in.
And me? I slept with a revolver under my pillow, hiding in the woods, in barns, in cornfields, or in the worst gambling dens and most miserable saloons. If I slept at all. I brooded, I gambled, but I did not return to the Rubicon.
The James-Younger Gang, if you read all the newspapers, went on a tear. We robbed a stagecoach down in Texas at a time when Frank and I were fishing down in the lake country near the Arkansas border. We held up two omnibuses outside of Lexington, Missouri—twenty-five miles apart. We even robbed the Tishomingo Savings
Bank in Corinth, Mississippi, and the next day held up the Kansas Pacific Railroad near Muncie, Kansas. Hardly a crime committed in the United States and her territories those days did not wind up on our record. You won’t believe the truth, Parson, but while all those robberies were going on, I found myself working cattle far away down in Florida for twenty dollars a month and found.
Yet during this time, many good citizens of Missouri came to our defense. Hardworking farmers had little love for railroads, and the Pinkerton men favored railroads, so Missouri folk began to take a strong dislike to detectives—especially after what happened one evening in January 1875.
Those Chicago dogs and traitorous neighbors sneaked like petty thieves to the James farm. Yes, I know, what Allan Pinkerton claimed, but I will go to my grave believing that those agents of Satan arrived at that farm with murder in their hearts. It was not some torch that they tossed through an open window, not a smoking device, but a grenade. A bomb, which blew the room to hell, sending shards of metal into the belly of Frank and Jesse’s stepbrother, a boy all of eight years old. It destroyed so much of Mrs. Samuel’s right arm that much of it had to be amputated.
An addle-brained boy who had never done anyone any harm had died an agonizing death. The widow of a Baptist preacher had been invalided—though I don’t think anything could have crippled Mrs. James at all, hard as she could be. People began to think that Frank and Jesse and Jim, Bob, and me should be given amnesty.
Amnesty. A full pardon. The chance to live like free men.
Not just Missouri folks. In Jacksonville, I saw an editorial in the Chicago Tribune declaring that amnesty would end the terror in Missouri. I read a copy of an amnesty bill introduced into the Missouri House of Representatives by Jefferson Jones of Callaway County. Callaway County was not in western Missouri, but over in the eastern central, Yankee, part of the state.
Whereas, Under the outlawry pronounced against Jesse W. James, Frank James, Coleman Younger, James Younger, and others, who gallantly periled their lives and their all in defense of their principles, they are of necessity made desperate, driven as they are from the fields of honest industry, from their friends, their families, their homes, and their country, they can know no law but the law of self-preservation, nor can have no respect for and feel no allegiance to a government which forces them to the very acts it professes to deprecate, and then offers a bounty for their apprehension, and arms foreign mercenaries with power to capture and kill them …
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