Warden Wolfer stood beside him, grinning as I entered the room.
Wolfer waved his hand, and his son came over, holding two telescope grips. The warden’s wife followed, with suits on hangers in either hand.
“Put these clothes on,” the warden said, “and you won’t have to go back.”
Jim blinked and stared at me. Neither of us understood a thing.
“You’ve been paroled,” Wolfer said.
* * * * *
Well, there’s nothing like walking away from the walls of a prison after twenty-five years. But parole … it’s not exactly free, Parson. I was still Jean Valjean, and Inspector Javert kept chasing me, wanting me dead or back behind bars. And the world Jim and I stepped into was not the one we had left back in 1876. Telephones and horseless carriages, though rare, could be seen. People wore different styles of clothes and hats. They walked fast. They did not stop to talk to strangers. They buried their heads in newspapers. Some on new-fangled velocipedes damned near ran us over.
We got jobs that befitted men of our stature and expertise. We sold tombstones. They paid us sixty dollars a month—each. When I had been ranching in Texas, I had paid my hired hands twenty-five dollars a month and found. I had made less than that working cattle in Florida, but, mostly, I had never earned an honest dollar.
The conditions of the parole said we could not leave Minnesota. We could not marry, not that anyone would want to tie the knot with a reprobate like me. We remained outcasts in a land still populated by many men and women who did not want us to be alive, let alone outside of Stillwater prison’s walls.
The grippe, rheumatism, and all the lead I still carried inside my body plagued me, and I wasn’t very good at selling tombstones. Think about it. A tombstone. That’s a hard product to move. Nobody wants to buy death. Oh, folks loved asking me inside their homes, and chatting with me, feeding me cake and cookies, and lubricating me with coffee or buttermilk. But when I asked if they wanted to pick out a headstone, they laughed, shook my hand so they could brag that they had shaken the hand of Cole Younger, and sent me on my way to see one of their neighbors.
I could handle that. Jim couldn’t.
My brother just never could find that level place. He’d be up, and up high, or he would sink into the depths of depression. As the months dragged on, he got lower, lower, lower. He quit selling tombstones around Stillwater and found work selling cigars in St. Paul. He wasn’t good at that, either. I could talk, you see. That mouth wound still plagued Jim’s speech. I’d go to plays—theaters gave me free tickets, for I was Cole Younger—but Jim? No church. No theaters. Not even saloons. He peddled cigars from this shabby stand, then he went to his hotel with his newspapers. He brooded. He visited Warden Wolfer more than he saw me. He went insane.
Jim was living in the Reardon Hotel. On that day, the violin player at the corner said he had looked happy when he stopped by on the way to the hotel. He had dropped a coin in the fiddler’s hat, smiled, and said: “So long, Atreus. You sound great today.” He had shaken hands with the bellman at the hotel, told him he would be indisposed, and walked up the stairs to his room.
There he retrieved the revolver, stretched out on his bed, put the barrel to the side of his head, and pulled the trigger.
It was October 19, 1902.
We put him in a casket, though this one was not as fine as the one the undertaker had given Brother Bob, and we sent him home to Lee’s Summit, to be buried alongside Bob.
When the train pulled out of the station, I walked the long walk back to my own lodging, too numb to cry, too shocked to feel any pain.
You ask me how many men I killed. I can’t rightly say, but I can think of three right off the bat.
John Younger.
Bob Younger.
Jim Younger.
Maybe Jim’s death changed the way people thought. Maybe God showed them the light. But, no, probably the people of Minnesota just got sick of having a Younger in their fine state. Anyway, early in 1903, the Board of Pardons decided to end my parole. They turned it into a full pardon. They sent me home, back to Missouri, and as the train headed south, I stared out the window, watching the land change, but staring mostly at my own reflection. A fat, bald, old man with pain-filled blue eyes looked back at me. He looked lost. Alone.
It made me wonder. All those years, riding with Quantrill, with Frank and Jesse, with my brothers. All those years in prison. Hell, maybe I had always been alone. And lost.
* * * * *
When I reached the hotel at Lee’s Summit, I signed the register as T. C. Younger. Couldn’t think of anything else.
The fellow behind the counter was mighty good at reading upside down. Immediately, he asked: “Are you Cole Younger?”
“Yeah.” My voice sounded weary. I took my grip and went to my room, closed the door, and waited. It took a damned long while, longer than I had expected, but I was used to being alone. Fully dressed, I fell asleep.
I woke up at dawn, didn’t go down for breakfast, just waited some more. Finally, footsteps sounded, stopping outside my door. I kept waiting until there came a tentative knock. I rolled off the bed, walked to the door, knowing I’d be answering a hundred more questions from some inkslinging newspaper bub.
But it wasn’t … not a boy, not a newspaper reporter. It was a woman, a woman with gray hair, but slight of figure, a woman with wonderful eyes that I would have recognized anywhere.
“Hello, Cole,” Lizzie Brown Daniel told me. “It has been a long time.”
My lips parted, yet no words came out.
“Come on,” she said, and held out her hand. “I have rented a buggy. Let’s go for a ride.”
Well, Parson, we went from place to place, all the way to where the Wayside Rest had once stood, to the two-story farmhouse where I had grown up, to Harrisonville, and back to Lee’s Summit, which had been called Strother when I was a boy.
“Everything’s changed,” I said in a frail voice.
Lizzie reached over, put her hand atop mine, and squeezed.
“Everything,” I said. Tears flowed and memories … good, bad, indifferent, but memories nonetheless … came flooding back. “Everything was so different then.”
Epilogue
1913
What else is there to say, Parson?
I did that brief little tour with Frank James, you might recall. The Great Cole Younger & Frank James Historical Wild West. As Wild West shows went, Buffalo Bill, Pawnee Bill, the 101 Ranch … they didn’t have to fear much competition from us.
One thing I recollect from many years earlier. Frank and I had passed a tent revival meeting in some Iowa town. It got us started on religion. We could talk on that subject just about all day back then, unless someone else in our gang brought up Shakespeare just to get us to change the subject. That was all before Northfield. Before Bob Ford murdered Jesse in St. Joseph.
“You think about God, Frank?” I asked him years later.
“No.”
I laughed. “A cousin of mine once asked me if we prayed before going into battle with Quantrill. I told him … ‘Sure. We prayed. But when the shooting started, we forgot all about those prayers and cursed like bullwhackers. Cursed so much it became hard to stop.’ ”
“Ain’t that the son-of-a-bitching truth,” Frank said, and spit out tobacco juice.
“Your father was a Baptist preacher, Buck,” I said. “Walking the Streets of Gold. I wonder if Jim, John, and Bob walk with him. Or even Dingus. Our time’s coming. You ever thought about making peace with God?”
Frank James sighed, shook his head, and turned to me. “Why Bishop Cole,” he said, “who the hell would want to go to heaven if it’s filled with outlaws and murderers like us?”
I started to laugh, only to find in his eyes that he meant it. “There’s no God, Bud,” Frank said. “No heaven. You die, you rot, and the wo
rms get your body.”
“There has to be more than that,” I said.
“There ain’t.”
Well, I don’t see Frank so much these days. He’s up at his farm, talking to tourists, charging them money to see his home. I don’t see many folks … hell, Parson, ain’t many of them around any more. But I got a sweet little niece, named Nora, and it was her who brought me to this here revival. Where I first heard you. And I come back. Got sick, but made myself come back once more. Today. You know what happened fifty years ago, Parson? The folks over in Lawrence, Kansas, certainly remember. Bet you plenty of folks are cursing Cole Younger’s name right now.
But here I am, Parson. An old man, a murderer, a thief, a liar, a scoundrel. I’ve walked up here alone. To turn my soul over into the hands of the Almighty. Mrs. Lizzie Daniel sure looks relieved that I’m doing this, but I want to ask you something before you lead me out of this tent and to the river, before you dunk my head beneath the cleansing waters, the Blood of the Lamb.
Do you want an outlaw and murderer like me in heaven?
Parson, have you ever read John Milton’s Paradise Lost?
Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.
It has been a hard way for me. But I am ready now, if you are. Am I supposed to feel different? I guess I do. It’s like I told Lizzie ten years ago.
Everything was so different then.
THE END
Author’s Note
On March 21, 1916, a little more than a year after the passing of his faithful friend, Frank James, Cole Younger died at his home in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. He was seventy-two.
“He was a dignified old gentleman,” Jack Lait wrote in the Chicago Herald, “respected by his community, wrapped up in religious work, a devout communicant and a valiant exhorter.”
The sons of Jesse and Frank James attended the funeral, after which, as rain fell, the body of the old Confederate bushwhacker and outlaw was brought to the Lee’s Summit Cemetery. Today, Cole Younger still rests alongside his mother and brothers Bob and Jim.
Although grounded in fact, Hard Way Out of Hell is a novel. For the purpose of narrative, I have taken liberties with dates and chronology, but much of what I have written is based on the truth, or, perhaps, how Cole Younger might have interpreted his own truth. Anyway, as I often say: “Don’t quote me in your term paper. I make things up.”
I’m not sure the definitive biography of Cole Younger has ever been written, but Marley Brandt’s The Outlaw Youngers: A Confederate Brotherhood is the best to date, and Homer Croy’s Cole Younger: Last of the Great Outlaws remains a fun read. I also relied on The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself (keeping in mind that Cole Younger was given to exaggerations, embellishments, and lies while remaining loyal to friends he did not wish to see in prison). Todd M. George’s Twelve Years with Cole Younger and The Conversion of Cole Younger proved helpful. I also turned to Ride the Razor’s Edge: The Younger Brothers Story by Carl W. Breihan, who had access to relatives and documents, but never documented his work, and sometimes appears to have stretched the truth as much as Cole Younger had.
Sorting through the myriad crimes attributed to the James-Younger Gang is a challenge in itself, especially since Frank James was acquitted in two trials. Cole Younger never implicated the James brothers. He even claimed that the only crime Bob, Jim, and he ever committed came in Northfield, when, as he wrote in his autobiography, “we decided to make one haul, and with our share of the proceeds start life anew in Cuba, South America, or Australia.” Jesse, on the other hand, never even got his day in court, thanks to Robert Ford. It’s hard to figure out which banks, trains, and stagecoaches the Jameses and Youngers actually robbed, and which were committed by copycats or another “gang of old bushwhacking desperadoes,” as the Liberty Tribune called them. Historians disagree on who was where. The James-Younger Gang might not have even committed the first robbery attributed to them (Liberty, Missouri, 1866). Even if they were there, Jesse’s bullet wound would likely have prevented him from participating, but we will probably never know for certain.
In any event, I just made my best guesses for the various robberies, or chose my bandits for the purpose of narrative.
Primary sources for Younger’s Civil War years included Donald L. Gilmore’s Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border ; Edward E. Leslie’s The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders ; Thomas Goodrich’s Bloody Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre; John McCorkle’s Three Years with Quantrill; Jim Cummins’ Book, Written by Himself ; and John N. Edwards’ Noted Guerrillas, or the Warfare of the Border.
Much of the James-Younger Gang research came from T. J. Stiles’ Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War ; Ted P. Yeatman’s Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend; James D. Horan’s Desperate Men; Homer Croy’s Jesse James was My Neighbor ; Robertus Love’s The Rise and Fall of Jesse James; Mark Lee Gardner’s Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West’s Greatest Escape; Dallas Cantrell’s Youngers’ Fatal Blunder: Northfield, Minnesota; Robert Barr Smith’s The Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang ; Sean McLachlan’s The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang: Jesse James and the Northfield Raid 1876; William A. Settle Jr.’s Jesse James Was His Name, or Fact and Fiction Concerning the Careers of the Notorious James Brothers of Missouri; Robert J. Wybrow’s “Horrid Murder & Heavy Robbery”: The Liberty Bank Robbery, 13 February 1866; Wilbur A. Zink’s The Roscoe Gun Battle: The Younger Brothers vs. Pinkerton Detectives; Ronald Beights’ Jesse James and the First Missouri Train Robbery; Frank Triplett’s The Life, Times, and Treacherous Death of Jesse James; John Newman Edwards’ A Terrible Quintette; Augustus C. Appler’s The Younger Brothers: The Life, Character, and Daring Exploits of the Youngers, the Notorious Bandits Who Rode with Jesse James and William Clarke Quantrell; J.W. Buel’s Border Bandits: The Authentic and Thrilling History of the Noted Outlaws, Jesse and Frank James, and Their Bands of Highwaymen; and Jesse James: The Best Writings on the Notorious Outlaw and His Gang, edited by Harold Dellinger.
The Stillwater prison days came from Convict Life at the Minnesota State Prison, Stillwater, Minnesota by William Heilbron; The Youngers’ Fight for Freedom by W. C. Bronaugh; and When the Heavens Fell: The Youngers in Stillwater Prison by John J. Koblas.
I would be remiss if I did not pay tribute to Koblas’ other fine books: Bushwhacker! Cole Younger & The Kansas-Missouri Border War ; Faithful unto Death: The James-Younger Raid on the First National Bank, September 7, 1876, Northfield, Minnesota; Jesse James in Iowa; and The Cole Younger & Frank James Historical Wild West Show. Jack Koblas wrote several other books, but these listed above were the ones I used for this novel. He was a fine historian, with a singular wit, and I enjoyed our road trips to various James-Younger Gang speaking gigs over the years. I didn’t even mind sleeping on his couch, because although he could be incredibly ornery, he had one amazing library, would often break out in songs, and he made me laugh—a lot. Jack died in 2013.
The Maise Walker story, by the way, came from Walker’s great-grandson, Billy Walker, so I must thank Mr. Walker. And special thanks to the downtown Kansas City Public Library’s excellent Missouri Valley Special Collections. The wonderful Guidon Books of Scottsdale, Arizona, and the James Country Mercantile of Liberty, Missouri, directed me to some rare books.
Other research assistance came from the Society of American Baseball Research; the Bushwhacker Museum in Nevada, Missouri; Missouri State Archives; the Jesse James Bank Museum in Liberty, Missouri; Jesse James Farm & Museum in Kearney, Missouri; Prairie Trails Museum of Wayne County in Corydon, Iowa; Kentucky Historical Society; State Historical Museum of Iowa in Des Moines; and the Watkins Museum of History; and the Convention and Visitors Bureau in Lawrence, Kansas.
A final tip of my hat to Hayes Scriven at the Northfield (Minnesota) Historical Society; and a
ll my cronies in the National James-Younger Gang and with the Friends of the James Farm. Not to mention L. C.’s for the burnt ends in Kansas City, and my son, Jack, for stopping with me at the Adair, Iowa, train-robbery site before making our way to Des Moines during our annual summer baseball trip. And, finally, to Jack Smith and Minta Sue Jack, for the loan of their guest bedroom, dining-room table, and sofa in Orange, California, where I finished a draft of this novel over Thanksgiving weekend.
This work could never have been finished without their help.
Johnny D. Boggs
Santa Fe, New Mexico
About the Author
Johnny D. Boggs has worked cattle, shot rapids in a canoe, hiked across mountains and deserts, traipsed around ghost towns, and spent hours poring over microfilm in library archives—all in the name of finding a good story. He’s also one of the few Western writers to have won six Spur Awards from Western Writers of America (for his novels Camp Ford in 2006, Doubtful Cañon in 2008, and Hard Winter in 2010, Legacy of a Lawman, West Texas Kill, both in 2012, and his short story, “A Piano at Dead Man’s Crossing,” in 2002), as well as the Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (for his novel Spark on the Prairie: The Trial of the Kiowa Chiefs in 2004). A native of South Carolina, Boggs spent almost fifteen years in Texas as a journalist at the Dallas Times Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram before moving to New Mexico in 1998 to concentrate full time on his novels. Author of dozens of published short stories, he has also written for more than fifty newspapers and magazines, and is a frequent contributor to Boys’ Life and True West. His Western novels cover a wide range. The Lonesome Chisholm Trail (2000) is an authentic cattle-drive story, while Lonely Trumpet (2002) is an historical novel about the first black graduate of West Point. The Despoilers (2002) and Ghost Legion (2005) are set in the Carolina backcountry during the Revolutionary War. The Big Fifty (2003) chronicles the slaughter of buffalo on the southern plains in the 1870s, while East of the Border (2004) is a comedy about the theatrical offerings of Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and Texas Jack Omohundro, and Camp Ford (2005) tells about a Civil War baseball game between Union prisoners of war and Confederate guards. “Boggs’ narrative voice captures the old-fashioned style of the past,” Publishers Weekly said, and Booklist called him “among the best Western writers at work today.” Boggs lives with his wife Lisa and son Jack in Santa Fe.
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