The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel

by Ron Hansen

  A PHYSICIAN INFORMED Clarence Hite in October that his coughing was due to consumption, and so he went back to Kentucky to recuperate, though life wasn’t especially pleasant there. Mrs. Sarah Hite ran away following the killing of John Tabor; Wood Hite was jailed, then escaped, then disappeared; and word came that Ed Miller was found decomposing in the woods. And then, Clarence would later confess, “about a week before Johnny Samuels was shot, Jesse wrote me a letter. It was postmarked Kearney, Missouri, but I think was written in Kansas City. He said in substance that I had better leave home; Dick was in with the detectives and they would soon take me away.”

  How Jesse could have known that remains a mystery: it could be he was guessing; it could be that clairvoyance was one of his gifts, just as he always claimed. In any case, Jesse was a month premature, for it was on January 24th, 1882, that James Andrew Liddil gave himself up to Sheriff Timberlake in Liberty, Missouri. Henry Craig had kept his promise and permitted no one else to know that it was Bob who put Dick Liddil in jeopardy, and Dick perceived Bob as such a friend that he pleaded with him to act as an intermediary between himself and the government.

  Dick was sent to Kansas City with Sheriff Timberlake and two deputies and was met at the depot by Commissioner Craig and Police Chief Thomas Speers, who scuttled him into the Second Street jail before reporters could learn his identity. Sitting on a slat bed in his jail cell was the Jackson County prosecuting attorney, William H. Wallace, and on a chair was a skinny amanuensis who wore half-moon spectacles. It was night by then and the jail was so cold that mists came from their mouths, and yet Wallace interviewed Liddil for more than three hours. A physician visited the cell and scolded Liddil about his injured leg as he milked pus from the wound and sprinkled it with powdered rosin before wrapping it in cloth.

  Clarence Hite was by then doctoring himself with a weed called candlewick that he steeped like tea, and he was brewing a pot of it in February when he responded to a voice like Bob Ford’s calling him into the yard. Clarence went to the windowed door in his long underwear and a woman’s bathrobe, a red handkerchief flowered at his mouth. It was night and he couldn’t see anything outside a hanging lantern’s yellow circle of light. He squeezed out between the door and doorframe and saw Bob Ford shying away from reproach and Dick Liddil in a rocking chair, blowing clouds into his manacled fists. Then a man who would later introduce himself as Henry Craig came forward and asked Liddil, “Do you know this man to be Clarence Browler Hite?”

  Liddil nodded with sorrow; Clarence merely examined a stain of blood on his palm and wiped it on his seat.

  Craig shouted to Bob, “Mr. Ford?” Bob raised his stare. “Do you identify this man as one of those who committed robbery on the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railway at Winston, Missouri?”

  Bob said, “You don’t look any too sassy, Clarence.”

  Clarence acknowledged the remark with a cough. He seemed to have shrunk two inches in every direction. “I’ve been sort of wolfish about the head and shoulders for nigh onto four months now.”

  Craig nudged an arrest warrant into Hite’s ribs and recounted its contents as Clarence puzzled out the great seal and the signatures of the governor and the secretary of state. Sheriff Timberlake connected handcuffs to his wrists and Clarence called to Bob, “You know them warts I cut off? They come back, every last one.”

  Clarence Browler Hite was remanded to Daviess County on February 13th and there two indictments were made, one for the murder of William Westfall and a subsidiary one for participation in the Winston train robbery in July. He was arraigned within weeks and, to the dismay of his defense attorney, pleaded guilty to the charge of robbery just so he would not be cross-examined and perhaps spill something important that the government could use. He was sentenced to twenty-five years in the penitentiary in Jefferson City, and in 1883, when his private information had long since ceased to matter, he would make a confession of his crimes and then he’d promptly die of consumption, as he’d predicted he would.

  SNOWSTORMS MOVED over Missouri on Sunday, February 19th, and shut down commerce for more than two days. The snow removed roads and made hammocks of telegraph wires and submerged cattle high as their shanks. It cut off every railroad line east of Kansas City to St. Louis, it stopped the mail somewhere south of Omaha, its run-off would make the Mississippi sixty miles wide around Helena, Arkansas, and yet it couldn’t prevent Bob Ford from presenting himself to Governor Crittenden at the Craig Rifles Ball on Wednesday. He rented two rough brown horses and a wooden sleigh with steel runners that initially marked the snow with rust and he guided the team with reins that were so cold they branched out from Bob’s mittens like ribbons of tin. The horses clouted through snowdrifts for two or three miles, sometimes sinking so deep that they lunged and swam with fright, but then Bob reached a main road and steered into twin gullies made by another sleigh and the horses clopped along at a trot. The sunshine was radiant on the snow. The woods were rose and brown against white. The sky was blue and with only gray wisps of clouds overhead, like scriptures of chalk erased from a slate. Bob crouched out of the cold and clenched into himself, his ears scarfed in a girlish way, listening to the whisper of the sleigh runners in the ruts.

  He arrived in Kansas City late that afternoon. Coal smoke gloomily darkened it and the streets were stacked high with muddied snow and Catholics walked the sidewalks with a priest’s cross of soot on their foreheads. February 22nd signaled the joint celebration of George Washington’s birthday and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, and as Bob slipped along toward the St. James Hotel, he could hear church bells as well as artillery salutes. He liveried the two workhorses and strolled the purple carpet of the hotel lobby, thawing his fingers at his mouth, until he figured out where to ask for Henry Craig’s room number and took the steps three at a time.

  The commissioner shouted for Bob to come in at his rap, and Bob sidled inside like a cat. Craig was naked in a wood and tin bathtub that was narrow as a coffin, scrubbing a foot with a pumice stone. “Didn’t expect you to make it.”

  Bob seated himself in a Queen Anne chair and slid his bowler hat beneath it. “I couldn’t pass up meeting the governor. Me and him’ve got some important matters to take up.”

  Craig cast an intolerant glance at Bob and then nodded toward a squat glass and a green bottle of whiskey. “How about some roockus juice?”

  Bob shook his head in the negative and smiled. “Doesn’t take more than a sip to make me want to bite off my own nose.”

  Craig sloshed messily out of the tub and swallowed what remained in the glass. Soap suds eased down his back. “Well, this is my day!” He tottered just a little and refilled the glass with whiskey before raising it. “Here’s to the Craig Rifles and to the great man who leads them so magnificently.”

  Bob asked, “Can I climb into that bath water? I caught a chill on my sleigh ride and that water might be accommodating.”

  “Go ahead,” Craig said and rigorously toweled himself as Bob stripped and sank into the tub with a groan. Craig said, “There’s something real seldom about you, Bob.”

  At about that time, Thomas Speers, the chief of the Kansas City Police Department, came up to the commissioner’s room with Dick Liddil. Craig invited Speers to gladden himself with the whiskey and Bob scuttled into a coal black closet, where he fumbled into underwear that was not his own, that was laundry-marked H.C. He came out just as two waiters trollied in a meal cart of covered silver dishes, and he slicked his wet hair with his sister’s ivory comb as he sat down to carrots and rare steak. Bob cut into the meat and then considered the other men’s plates. “Is your cow still moving?”

  Dick rose in his chair to see the color. “Just singed it a little, did they?”

  “I’ve seen critters worse off than this get well.”

  Craig said, “You’re not going to be complaining all evening, are you?”

  “Me? I’m happy, Henry! It’s the Craig Rifles Ball! It’s your night!”

  “
Don’t give the governor your smart aleck talk,” said Craig, sniffing a wine cork and then pouring a burgundy for Speers and himself.

  Plates were cleaned, opinions swapped, and then two policemen were sent up to sit with Dick and Bob as Commissioner Henry Craig and Police Chief Thomas Speers made their grand entrance at the party in the second-floor ballroom. The policemen opened a pack of cards, Dick put his ear to the carpet in order to listen to opera adaptations, Bob flipped through pages of the newspapers on the bed.

  On January 30th, a jury decided that Charles J. Guiteau was governed not by God or insanity but by his own wickedness, and they returned a verdict of guilty as charged for his killing of President Garfield. Judge Cox sentenced him to public execution and Guiteau screamed, “I am here as God’s man! God Almighty will curse every man who has had anything to do with this case!” Soon after that, correspondents stopped filing stories about the condemned man, but on February 22nd, there was an item that Bob read aloud: “ ‘Guiteau is said to believe that he would be a great success in the lecture field. There is no doubt that his next appearance on the platform, June thirtieth, eighteen eighty-two, will be hailed with great satisfaction by the American people.’ ”

  Dick snickered a little. “Anything else interesting?”

  Bob looked. The newspaper reminded its readers that it was Ash

  Wednesday, and that the following forty days were “a time for penitential retirement from the world and abstinence from the festivities of ordinary life in order to afford an opportunity for reflection, undistracted by secular pursuits, on sins committed and preparations to do battle in the future against temptations and fleshly lusts.”

  Bob skipped to another column and then slapped the newspaper pages together and jumped up from the bed. He called to the policemen, “Do I have to stay cooped up here? It’s only Dick who’s under arrest.”

  The policeman in charge made Bob leave his gun and overcoat and then let him out to saunter from floor to floor and linger by the St. James Hotel’s grand ballroom. The orchestra was in recess and a boy of twelve was on a stepladder above a respectful crowd, reciting a poem about George Washington. “Hail! Natal day of Freedom’s son, his country’s boast and pride—our own beloved Washington, who Tyranny defied.”

  Gentlemen in tails were stamping snow from their shoes in the corridor and ladies in ankle-long cloaks and satin gowns and perfumes of mimosa were greeting each other and patting wrists and laughing as they sashayed in. Bob followed them and slunk over to a corner and tarried there as he listened to the boy continue: “We share the glories that he won and, should the need arise, could still produce a Washington to lead, protect, advise; the hero’s progeny survives, engaged in useful, peaceful lives.”

  The crowd applauded with greater sympathy than appreciation and the boy crept down from the ladder to be superseded by Commissioner Henry Craig. He hooked an arm around a stepladder strut to stop his slightly drunken sway and then joked and kidded and made the silly remarks of a master of ceremonies. The crowd’s laughter was contrived and overly hearty and Bob muttered aloud, “You’re not so great,” at which a woman glared. His look was too nighted, his blue eyes skittered, he knew he seemed callow and uncouth, and yet he moved closer as Craig exclaimed about the vigilant governor of Missouri whom it was his incomparable honor to serve. And without further ado, Craig flung out his left arm toward a round table at which sat the lions of industry and property and their sumptuously ornamented wives. The reassembled orchestra played music Bob couldn’t recognize and wine glasses were chimed with spoons until the governor rose up and produced silence among them by dispensing his palms.

  Governor Thomas Theodore Crittenden was a stout man of fifty with perfectly combed white hair, penetrating brown eyes, and a white mustache that was clipped so close it was little more than a chalky bristle. He loved the grandeur and pomp of high office and he paused sublimely, gathering everyone’s attention, before he greeted his audience and graciously bowed to Craig. He said, “I deem it a great privilege on this glorious occasion to recognize publicly the intelligent and efficient assistance that Captain Henry Craig has thus far provided the State of Missouri and myself in our joint quest to extirpate the James band from Jackson County. The aid rendered by this gentleman is invaluable to me, and without it, the duty devolving upon me would be much more difficult, if not altogether impossible to accomplish. The task Henry Craig has assumed requires fearless courage, extraordinary vigilance, and an unerring selection of instrumentalities. He is always ready to undergo any labor, danger, or exposure in pursuit of the outlaws, and in every action Henry Craig has committed himself to the highest standards of the Craig Rifles and the Kansas City Police Department, and to that I unhesitatingly bear official testimony.” The governor glanced to his right and smiled with good humor at the audience. “My wife has just signaled that I should leave well enough alone, so I’ll leave you all with the wish for an enjoyable evening and with the hope that I may have the pleasure of meeting you each before this celebration is ended.”

  By then Bob was only five ranks away from the round table and yearning for acknowledgment. He jostled closer, rustling belled, chiffon skirts, pushing a goateed man aside, and lifted an arm in a joyous and juvenile wave that Governor Crittenden squinted at. And Bob was insinuating himself close enough to give his name when his collar was snatched and both biceps were painfully grasped by two of Craig’s policemen. He was going to shout but his mouth was clasped shut, and he was going to kick free when he was socked in the groin and collapsed in agony. Some people looked at him reproachfully and then the orchestra was playing a waltz and they simply passed around him as the policemen picked him up.

  Craig was at the ticket table next to the door prizes of japanned dishware and a Singer sewing machine. The policemen shoved Bob into the corridor and Bob sagged against an ornate mahogany pillar. Craig said, “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

  “I was just going to say hello.”

  “That isn’t why you’re here. Get upstairs now and see if you can’t keep your identity secret.”

  Dick Liddil was in a soft chair next to a coal-oil lamp, reading the newspapers; the two policemen were smoking cigarettes with their coats opened, their eyes on the snow in the streets. Dick was telling them, “Representative Thomas Allen is dying of cancer, it says. Richest man in Congress too; worth fifteen million dollars.”

  A policeman said, “The grim reaper don’t care who you are.” Bob flopped down into a chair and put his stockinged feet up on an ottoman. He said, “You can read about your captains of industry in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly.”

  Dick looked over the top of the newspaper and asked, “How was the party?”

  Bob said, “You take Alexander Stewart. He stocked his dry goods store in New York with only five thousand dollars to his name. He was nineteen years old at the time. And when he kicked the bucket he was worth somewheres close to fifty million. Commodore Vanderbilt is another case. He started out on the ferry boat from Staten Island to New York City and he’s got a fortune of about one hundred million dollars now. Look at Jay Gould. He’s as crooked as a coat hanger and doesn’t care fiddlesticks about public opinion, but you know what? He’s forty-five years-old now and he owns the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Probably worth fifty million. And guess what else. Jay Gould wasn’t but a surveyor when he was twenty.”

  Dick said, “You’ll catch him in no time, Bob.”

  “Don’t laugh. I’m going to have a good start on it pretty dang soon.”

  IT WASN’T UNTIL MIDNIGHT that Commissioner Craig returned to the room. Dick was asleep and Bob was shaving with Craig’s toiletries and bleeding from two nicks. Craig waggled Dick’s foot until he awoke and then frowned into the dresser mirror at Bob. Bob said, “What’re you looking at now?”

  “My God, have you no respect for private property?”

  Bob patted his face dry and lamely said, “I’m the one who’s cut.”

  Craig walked t
o the corridor, saying in a peremptory way, “The governor’s in his suite.”

  The corridor was carpeted in purple and ceilinged in white fleur-de-lis. Gas lamps whispered as they passed. Dick yawned loudly, like a dog, and Bob inquired about salutary topics of conversation. Craig ignored him. Craig was no longer intoxicated and the aftereffects were making him grouchy.

  The governor met them in a red silk robe that was sealed like an envelope around his starched white shirt and tuxedo trousers. On his feet were calfskin slippers and on his cheeks he wore cologne. Craig made cursory introductions and Crittenden neglected to shake their available hands as he settled into a Chippendale settee and specified green wingback chairs for his guests. He said, “My wife is asleep in the next room, so let’s speak as quietly as we can.”

  A gold tea service was on the oiled table at his shins; gold candelabra were stationed near the settee arms and the smoke from the candle flames rose straight up. A glint of light was on the governor’s nose and his brown eyes glittered as he regarded the two strangers. “You’re Dick Little.”

  “Liddil.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I spell it with two d’s.”

  The governor accepted the correction and Craig said, “He’s given us a confession but so far the newspapers haven’t caught onto it. You’ve guaranteed him a conditional pardon and amnesty for his robberies.”

  Crittenden arranged two pillows beneath his left elbow so that he could lean confidentially toward Bob. “You’re Robert Ford.”

  Bob grinned but could think of nothing to say.

  “How old are you, Bob?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Did you surrender to Sheriff Timberlake as well?”

  Craig said, “It was his brother Charley who was in the James gang. We couldn’t find anything on Bob. He’s acting in the capacity of a private detective. He helped us make the pact with Liddil, and he was one of the party that captured Clarence Hite in Kentucky.”