“Fat bank,” Jesse said. “What do y’all think?”
I cleared my throat, but it was Frank who spoke. Likely he knew Jesse—and Bob—would veto anything I had to say, on the principle of the matter. Frank, though, pulled some weight.
“Bank’s fine,” Frank said, “but these people have suffered enough.”
“They’re Yankees, Buck,” Jesse said.
“They’re also farmers. Like our neighbors back home. Grasshoppers have given them plenty of misery, same as they’ve ruined some of our friends’ crops in Missouri. We don’t need to add to their troubles.”
“Yeah.” Bob, who always wanted to be a farmer, nodded sadly. Bill Chadwell only sighed, for he liked the layout and the loot in Mankato. Jesse knew he had no hope of bucking Frank—and me—when Bob agreed with us.
“All right,” Jesse said. “Let’s check out Northfield.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
You’ll want to know about Northfield, of course.
Like everyone else.
Who murdered Heywood, the cashier inside the First National Bank? Who shot down that Swede in the streets?
I’ve kept silent for many a year, never answering questions from any newspaperman. Never did I admit that the James brothers rode with us. I’ve named our accomplices, Woods and Howard, but I guess everyone in the world, along with the Good Lord, knows the truth. Already I’ve told you enough about who I’d trust inside a bank. But things didn’t work out. You see … the boys had been drinking.
When Clell and I crossed the bridge and saw the streets and boardwalks crowded, I thought for sure our “inside men” would get back into their saddles and ride right out of town. Mankato certainly seemed like a better place for us to be than this pretty little town on the Cannon River. At least it did on that particular Thursday afternoon.
Clell was smoking his pipe. You see, he had bragged that he would smoke it right through the whole robbery. When our three inside men rose from the boxes they had been sitting on and walked into the bank, Clem was struck dumb, and he removed the pipe from his mouth. “They’re goin’ in,” he managed to say, dismounting.
“If they do …” My throat turned dry, and my hands suddenly felt clammy. “The alarm will be given as sure as there’s a hell.”
Cursing, Clell emptied the bowl and stuck the pipe in the pocket of his duster.
Hell, the boys had been drinking so much, they didn’t even think to close the damned door to the bank. Clell quickly took care of that himself, while I swung down onto the street to tighten my saddle’s cinch.
The next thing I heard was Clell screaming at one of those damned hayseeds, as Chadwell like to call them. “Get out of here, you son of a bitch!”
Clell’s shout was followed, as I knew it would be, by a call to arms by one of the locals. “Get your guns, boys! They are robbing the bank!”
It only took seven minutes. Chadwell and poor old Clell were dead. A bullet had shattered Bob’s right elbow, but, I have to give him credit, he did that border shift I had taught him, emptying his pistol as I rode up.
“Get up behind me!” I yelled.
We galloped out of town—six men on five horses —shot to pieces. Terribly wounded, Bob gripped me hard around my stomach as we were chased out of Northfield, whipped by men who damned sure were no hayseeds.
All for $26.70.
Honestly, I can’t say who killed the Swede. It might have been me. It could have been a townsman. Could have been anybody. They say he couldn’t understand English, which is why he got killed. Ask me, though, and I’d say he was a drunk or a fool. English? The language of bullets and gun smoke is universal, don’t you think?
Who shot that brave man in the bank and left him dead? Remember, I was not in the bank. Anything I say would be ruled in a court of law as hearsay. God knows the truth. And, Parson, I think you do, too. You’re smart enough to figure out who did what, who we might pick as our inside men. That’s all I really have to say about Northfield. Don’t look glum, Parson. I even refused to tell Retta when she asked, and I love my sister. And I can die knowing that I never betrayed a friend.
* * * * *
We bathed our wounds in the Dundas River, stole horses, stole chickens when we could, or bought bread, rode hard or walked what seemed like forever. Jim had been hit in the shoulder; I had a bullet in my thigh; Frank had one through the leg. Charlie Pitts had escaped unscathed. So had Jesse, but, you ask me, he should have been one of those killed. Bob was hurt the worst, though, his right elbow shattered and bleeding like a stuck pig, already becoming feverish.
“Leave me!” he wailed. “Leave me! I’ll just slow you down.”
Grimacing from the pain in my leg, and the thought of what probably awaited us, I somehow said: “We rode here together. We ride away together. Or we die together.” I said that more to Jesse, because I could tell he thought that we should leave Bob.
The next day, as we hid in the Big Woods, full of swamps, ticks, and mosquitoes, it started to rain. And it rarely stopped.
Folks say the state of Minnesota sent a thousand men after us, and I say not a damned one of them was worth spit. How else could we, as badly shot up as we were, strangers in a strange land, have managed to hold out for so long?
Let me make one thing straight. It is my belief that Jesse was all for leaving us as soon as we rode past the Dundas, but he stuck with us. Perhaps because Frank would not abandon us. It was after we had crossed the Blue Earth River, with rains still drenching us, and Bob growing weaker and worse, that I waved Frank and Jesse over.
“Take the horses,” I said, which was not as honorable as it sounds. The horses we had managed to steal would not get anyone far. “Leave us. Save yourselves.”
We parted friends, Frank and me. Jesse and me? We parted friendly. Honorable. Those stories that Jesse wanted to kill Bob, or Jim, are bald-faced lies. Oh, after our capture at Hanska Slough and while we waited in Faribault for our trial and sentencing, lawmen would come in, telling us that Jesse voted to shoot us down like dogs, but those lawmen weren’t there, and they just wanted us to forget the code of the bushwhacker. Die game. Never betray your friends.
Frank and Jesse rode out, vowing to lead any posse away for us. Charlie Pitts could have gone, too, but he stuck with us to the end, though I wish he had not.
It was September 21st and we were limping and stumbling through the vines, eating off plums. That’s when the posse finally caught up with us at Hanska Slough. That’s when Charlie Pitts told me: “We’re surrounded. We had better surrender.”
I told him: “Charlie, this is where Cole Younger dies.”
Only I didn’t die, though I took a lot of lead, lead that still weighs me down. It was Charlie Pitts who died, and that’s what I truly regret.
Buckshot tore into my shoulder, a bullet went into my jaw, another through my arm, and one in my armpit. Jim caught buckshot in his thigh, but his worst wound was the bullet that smashed part of his jaw and lodged in the roof of his mouth. Bob got hit in a lung.
No one thought we would survive, but we were Youngers. I remember pulling myself to my feet, bloodied as I was, hurting as I did. By Jehovah, I was so waterlogged from all the rain that when they pulled off my rotting boots, the toenails came off with what was left of my socks. Yet I tipped my hat to the ladies as they took us to the Flanders Hotel in Madelia.
* * * * *
Feelings ran hot in most of Minnesota after our capture. Plenty of folks wanted to see us swing, and I heard that a few lynch mobs had gathered here and there. Yet, for the most part, we were treated with kindness and charity. We did not look like cold-blooded killers. We looked like the miserable men we were—shot to hell, rained on for two weeks, sick, pale, half dead.
Ladies were praying for us. They brought us cookies and tea and hand-me-down clothes to wear. They treated our injuries. The read Scripture with
us, serenaded us with hymns.
By the time we arrived in Faribault for our trial, Retta and Aunt Fanny had traveled north from Missouri. It hurt worse than my feet or jaw or leg, seeing those fine women pained so at our conditions and our probable future. We had been indicted with accessory to the murder of Joseph Heywood; assault with a deadly weapon—for Charlie Pitts had shot Alonzo Bunker inside the bank when the banker bolted for the door; murder and accessory to the murder of the Swede, Nicholas Gustavson; finally, of course, robbing the First National Bank of Northfield.
A Yank named George W. Batchelder agreed to defend us. When I first saw him, he asked how my wounds were healing.
“I don’t mind being shot,” I told him. “It’s the hanging that I dread.”
“I might know a way for you, Jim, and Bob to keep your necks out of a noose,” he said.
I stiffened. “I’ve told every Pinkerton man, every sheriff, every preacher, and every jailer the same thing, Mr. Batchelder. The names of the two gents who got away were Howard and Woods. They joined us late in the game, and neither me nor my brothers know anything about them.”
The lawyer grinned slyly. “I never thought you would betray your friends, Cole. That’s not my intention. My intention is this …”
That’s when he told us about the Minnesota law. Back in 1868, the state had passed a law that allowed hanging only if a jury found a defendant guilty. “Plead guilty,” Batchelder said, “and the worst they can give you is life in prison.”
“Ain’t much of a life, is it?” I said.
“But it’s life,” he said.
On the twentieth of November, our deputies brought us in shackles to the crowded courthouse. One by one, we went up to the judge and pleaded guilty to the charges. Well, Parson, I thought, lawyers being lawyers, that they would find some way to hang us, anyway. So when the judge asked if any of us had something to say, I managed to stand.
“I feel responsible for leading my brothers into the deplorable situation in which we find ourselves.” That was no lie. “I would willingly suffer death in any form … if by doing so … my brothers could go free.” Which was God-honest truthful, too.
The judge bowed his head, cleared his throat, and looked up.
“I have no word of comfort to offer you, and no desire to speak harshly of the deeds, which have brought you into your present position. The sentence of the law leaves you life, but robbed of all its pleasures, hopes, and ambition.”
Life in prison at hard labor.
Retta broke into tears, and Jim turned to hug her. Aunt Fanny scowled at us, but she had always been a hard woman. She came north not for our sakes, but to chaperone Retta. Yet, to our amazement, women in the gallery broke into tears, and I heard some rustling of skirts, then a woman’s voice as she ran down the center aisle.
Sobbing, she cried out: “Oh, Lord, let me kiss those poor boys!”
Part III
1876–1903
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The air he inhaled was no longer pure, but thick and mephitic—he was in prison.
Yes, I had read Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, and so naïve was I that I thought I knew everything about prisons. Yet nothing could prepare me for what I would have to endure, and Chateau d’If was a long, long way from Stillwater, Minnesota.
Sheriff Ara Barton and three deputies escorted us by train and wagon from Faribault to Stillwater. When we stepped out and stared at those dismal stone walls, Bob joked: “Well, I’ve finally found myself a real home.”
A lot of folks had come to see our arrival, but no one cheered. If they spoke, they used only whispers. Most pointed at us. We tried not to look at them. Our “come-along” manacles jingling, we walked toward the heavy iron gate, which a couple of uniformed men opened.
They called the room “Between the Gates.” I shivered, for it was November, and the room felt deathly cold. Coats and hats hung on the walls. The floor was cold, there being no rug on it. Men rose from desks. Plenty of hard wooden chairs lined the walls, but prisoners were not allowed to sit down. The deputy warden pushed back his chair, closed a big ledger book, and walked toward us, motioning some big guards in woolen coats to follow him. Sheriff Barton unlocked our cuffs, but before Bob, Jim, or I could rub the circulation back into our wrists and hands, some of these Stillwater boys began prodding us and patting us in some of our most personal places. His shattered arm still hurting fiercely, Bob cried out in pain.
“Easy with him!” I snapped, and down I went to my knees, seeing circles and geometrical shapes of orange and purple and red flashing before my eyes.
“Shut up, fish!” a big man barked behind me, and I got jerked back to my feet while another man, grinning black teeth, put his hand on my manhood and squeezed.
“They’re clean,” he said as he stepped away, and the deputy warden nodded, then turned to Sheriff Barton.
“You have their paperwork?” he asked.
Barton pulled some papers from his coat, and they went over to a desk. I guess everything seemed in order, because the deputy warden handed Barton a receipt.
Receipt. Like we were three horses being sold at an auction.
We each got a receipt, too, for our bundles of personal belongings, which Barton gave one of the guards. We watched as each of our tied-up bundles was handed to some prisoner—what they called a trustee—a black man dressed in a gray suit with a cap. The man said something in a whisper that we could not hear, and hurried out of Between the Gates.
“Good luck, boys,” Sheriff Barton said, but we knew better than to say good-bye. The gate opened and closed, and I suddenly felt the cold of November more intensely. Although my brothers stood beside me, I never felt so alone.
“All right, fresh fish.” One of the guards prodded me with a billy club, pushing me toward the next gate. Jim and Bob followed, and I let a burly guard with a crooked nose lead us to the bathhouse.
It was not anything like any bath I had ever taken.
And the clothes they handed us were not the fine duds we often wore, but coarse, scratchy woolen suits of black and white stripes. Next, we were sent into the tonsorial parlor to get our hair practically shaved off—not that I had much left any more.
“Leave my mustache and goatee,” I told him.
He did not listen, and the biggest of our guards pressed his club on my shoulder to make sure I didn’t complain. I started to learn something right then and there.
All my life as an outlaw, and even whilst I rode with Quantrill, I had enjoyed a luxurious life. Many folks who were neither Yankees nor Kansans treated me and men of my ilk as heroes. Riding with Frank and Jesse, we paid our hosts quite well, and they usually gave us a welcome befitting a king. Even in Madelia and Faribault, the ladies and a few men showered us with sympathy, kindness, and Christian charity—due, perhaps, to our grievous wounds and poor health.
In Stillwater, we were nothing special. We were dirt. Fresh fish as we would be called. Outlaws. Convicts. Prisoners sentenced to life at hard labor.
Our fingers were first pressed onto an ink pad, then onto a sheet of paper. They gave us a grimy handkerchief to wipe off the ink from our fingers. They marched us to the warden’s office.
“My name is John A. Reed.” Rising behind his desk, Warden Reed did not offer to shake our hands. “You are third-grade prisoners. That means you have no privileges. None. No tobacco. No writing or receiving of letters. No visitors. Your meals will be taken in your cells. You may have found yourselves all high and mighty outside these walls, but let me make one thing perfectly clear. This is what you are to me.” He came around from behind his desk and pointed a long finger under my nose. “Number Eight Hundred and Ninety-Nine.”
To Jim: “Number Nine Hundred.”
And Bob: “Number Nine-Oh-One.”
The warden walked back to his desk seat. “I hear the James boys pla
n to break you out of prison.”
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Bob’s face brighten, but I snorted and said: “I haven’t seen Frank in more than a year, and Jesse and I aren’t on good …”
A club caught me on the back of my head, which seemed to make every bullet as well as any buckshot still in my body rattle. I dropped to my knees, shook the pain out of my head, and felt rough hands jerk me back to my feet.
“You talk,” Warden Reed said, “when you have permission. Do you understand? You have permission to answer.”
Another club jabbed my kidneys. “Answer the warden, fish!”
“Yes, sir,” I cried.
“Griggs, get these men out of my sight and put them to work. Tubs and buckets.”
Griggs? I looked at the burly guard. He wasn’t my old schoolmaster, Bob Griggs, but he seemed just as mean.
“Turn to the right,” Griggs growled after we had left the warden’s office. Twenty feet later, he ordered: “Turn to the left.” And we entered the cell house.
Iron and stone, walls three feet thick, cold, damp. I felt like Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, and Griggs, I feared, would be Inspector Javert.
Six hundred and sixty-four cells over six inhospitable floors. They put us on the ground floor. I supposed they figured we would be easier to guard that way, in case Jesse James decided to break us out. Wasn’t that a joke!
“Cayou,” Griggs said, “they’re yours. If they give you any grief, bash their brains out. It’ll give the next fresh fish that swims in here something to clean up with whitewash.”
Griggs’ boots gave off echoes as he marched out of the cell house and into the gray November light.
Ben Cayou, our personal guard, rattled a ring of keys as he unlocked what was to be my home for, as the judge in Faribault had decreed, the rest of my natural life. Like anything was natural about this.
Hard Way Out of Hell Page 18