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

by Ron Hansen

  His was a night life. He slept late and read the Colorado newspapers in an elegant silk kimono as Dorothy brought in doughnuts and coffee and straightened the dark green room. His eyes moved speedily over the pages, skipping the lists of mine applications, stopping only on stories of gruesome accident and crime. He wore his ginger brown hair longer now than when he was twenty, in a gentleman’s cut that gently waved and was scented with European fragrances. His distinguished mustache gave him years and panache but his boyishness wasn’t gone yet, and when he stripped in front of his common-law wife, his slight but scrappy body seemed that of a juvenile. His clothing was English and high-fashion, his starched white shirts always seemed just bought, actor’s lifts made him seem long-legged and six feet tall, he cocked his bowler hat to the right and was genial on the street.

  He walked gracefully even in snow and affected a certain jauntiness by flicking his hat brim with a finger in greeting and by swinging an Italian cane, tilting against it as he gossiped and joked. He was gregarious to everyone and genuine to his companions. He smoked good twenty-five-cent cigars. He greeted all regulars to the Exchange Club and gave away to every gambler shot glasses of an overnight whiskey he concocted on a stove, though he himself would lounge at a corner table with J. and F. Martell cognac or a green bottle of Jackson’s sour mash. He might stay eight or nine hours there, inviting acquaintances over to join him, giving orders to the dancing girls and prostitutes in gestures and sign language.

  If he did not forget to eat he partook of a huge meal at seven, getting it over with at one sitting and never seeming to gain weight. Then he’d spin roulette or play poker in his gambling room, often giving up on straights or perfect combinations of cards rather than bring on a challenge that he’d been cheating. He could in fact perform magic tricks, practice sleight-of-hand, cut to the royalty at will, guess accurately what a player was holding, move the aces anywhere he wished as he swiftly shuffled the Bicycle deck. His fingers were nimble, his mind was quick, his blue eyes caught every nuance; he recognized patterns and strategies and was rarely swindled or captivated except when it suited his purpose.

  He laughed often in an overeager, miscarrying voice and could talk engagingly at great length, but his subject was all too frequently himself; a glance from him could cut the tongue from a man, and he aggravated at the slightest suggestion of insult when among spectators, going for his gun with no more misgivings than if he were reaching for change. He was physically strong and wild with his fists, a grappler and aggressor who could go straight at anyone without regard for their size. And yet he was cautious, fidgety, high-strung, vigilant. He kept his back to the angled meetings of walls or kept his eyes on the long saloon mirror that was just lately imported from France. If doors were left open, he shut them; he never lingered near windowglass, never gave his back to strangers, never climbed ladders or chairs; a gun was string-tied to his thigh all day and slipped under his pillow at night.

  He noticed the comings and goings of the nightwalkers he managed and was gentle with them, called them daughters, savagely cudgeled any man who was rough with them in their sleeping rooms or paid them less than they’d agreed upon. He would periodically prowl the upstairs corridor, putting his ear to the sleeping room doors, and if she wasn’t then employed, Bob would ask Dorothy to prettify herself and join the company at his corner table. Already there would be his rough good friends in Creede: Joe Palmer, who would be run out of town in April, “Broken Nose” Creek, a cousin of the Younger brothers, and Jack Pugh, a horse thief who’d come to Creede to run a livery stable. They would speak together of appalling crimes that they never actually committed; Bob would exaggerate his participation and accomplishments in the James gang’s last years, going on and on with his misrepresentations as Dorothy pampered him with courtesies and pleasantly simpered at his guests. If there was a dispute about the long career of the James gang, Bob was the authority, for he recognized every legend, consumed every history and dime novel, he was basically as engrossed in the man as a good biographer could be and even called the Jameses his cousins, a heritage that nobody argued with.

  He openly collected the prostitution receipts from Dorothy at midnight, giving the money to a cash register that was scrolled and plated with nickel. He kissed his common-law wife goodnight and sent the dancing girls out or upstairs, and then gradually shooed his patrons from the saloon so that he could make an accounting of his profits from faro, birdcage, roulette, and stud poker. The croupiers helped him sweep the floor and wipe the counters and tabletops with soaped towels, then Bob adjusted the pipes and pans and stovetop temperature for his overnight whiskey, paid the two mixologists for their evening’s work, and locked and barred every door.

  Then he might pour a big glass of Chapin and Gore and clean his pistol by candlelight. He could hear the girls pillowfight upstairs, could hear one of them slip down to be with a paramour, could hear a boy creep into the privy in order to pass the night in its dry protection. Bob would point the Colt at objects in the saloon and make the hammer snap the quiet in the great room. And he’d say a word or two to Jesse as he went upstairs to sleep.

  THE COMING OF SOAPY SMITH to Creede began the change in Bob. He was a mountebank, swindler, and confidence man who was born Jefferson Randolph Smith in Georgia in 1860, grew up throughout the South, and graduated from moving cattle in Texas to carnival work in Colorado. He was a glib and magnetic talker with a glad-to-meet-you jubilance and a way of getting delighted attention whenever he joined a crowd. He would gull men who thought they were cunning and wily into collaborating with him on an illegal project and then make them the target of the intrigue before they could get out of it, finagling so many in that manner that the city of Denver was no longer safe and he thought it wise to go west.

  And so he came to Creede in February 1892 on a Denver and Rio Grande passenger train that rammed a giant plow along the rails in great surfs and tempests of snow. He went there with a gang of sixteen bodyguards, gamblers, and underlings and gradually made his way through the town, introducing himself to every shopkeeper and card-sharp, a joke for each man he stopped on the street, a gift of beer for everybody in whichever saloon he barged into, always acting the scamp and rogue and good sport, a man who was rich and leisured, who had the common touch.

  He progressed in such a way along Amethyst Street that he got to the Exchange Club over a week after he arrived, and Soapy placed himself at the gaming tables so that he could peer across the room at the lord of the place, Bob Ford.

  He saw a jittery, laughing man of thirty sitting magisterially in a corner, eating cake with his fingers, inviting company over, pouring cognac for all comers. His rough friends sat around the circular table in Mackinaw and astrakhan coats, snow becoming water on their big crossed arms and sliding into beads on their mustaches, their ungloved and grimy hands blackly smudging the glassware. Though Bob Ford’s birthday was weeks past, his age was apparently a topic, for Soapy once overheard him say, “I always thought I’d go off like a skyrocket, but now it looks like I’ll just be petering out”; and then Bob pursued other issues, monopolizing the conversation, paying little attention to what was said by others or even to his own replies, only talking ceaselessly like a man trying to clean every scrap of language out of his puzzled mind. And always he was looking to his right or left, looking into the many assorted mirrors, looking at every gun, until he appeared to spy an enemy in the gambling crowd and got up to intercept one of his pretty waiter girls and say, “Don’t give him anything.”

  The man he said that about was Edward O. Kelly. He’d journeyed downward into dipsomania and depression since his gunfight with Bob in the Phoenix Hotel and he’d come to Creede without hope or plan. The police department in Pueblo had pressured Kelly until he paid a Fourth Street physician for surgery on the janitor’s foot, sharpening the man’s stupid prejudice to such an extent that he shot and killed a man of color named Ed Riley for a simple act of clumsiness. The common bigotry of the age salvaged Kel
ly and he wasn’t charged with a crime, much less found guilty, but he was expunged from the police department, finding work only as a streetcar driver and begging for coins on the sidewalk until he’d gathered enough for passage to Creede.

  And then he gained entrance to the Exchange Club, ogled its extravagance, gripped and regripped his cold fingers at a fire, and when a girl came by, Kelly had the gall to order a complimentary shot glass of whiskey in a gruff voice that Bob recognized.

  In accordance with the saloon owner’s instructions that Kelly ought not to be given anything, the girl returned to the bar with the shot glass on a tray and Bob imperturbably paused by one of the gaming tables to study the dexterity of a poker dealer he’d recently hired. Bob stacked coins and looked to an overhead mirror and saw Kelly shrug off his long wool coat as he argued with himself. The man seemed wild, insane, and fifty years old, though he would have been thirty-five, and Bob caught a glimpse of Wood Hite in Kelly as the man adjusted his long pistol. He was wearing a blue policeman’s jacket with the insignia buttons cut off and a cartridge belt and gun were strapped over it so that they middled him. Kelly gave some learning to his right hand and unsnugged his gun in its cracked leather holster as he jostled through the gambling hall crowd to close on the man he thought of as his antagonist.

  Kelly pulled up his pistol and a girl shouted, “He’s gonna kill you!” but Bob only smiled and pretended he was Jesse as he approached Kelly sociably, his arms sweeping out as if he accepted all humanity and especially his present company. “Hey!” Bob said. “Hey, you ought to let bygones be bygones!” And then he grinned so congenially that he surprised Kelly and slowed him just enough to unexpectedly slap the man’s cheek with his right hand and clasp the pistol with his left, jolting Kelly low and awry as Bob jerked the gun from his grip. He then snapped his right knee into Kelly’s mouth and the ex-policeman collapsed with a split upper lip and Bob cruelly rapped the man’s skull with his own long pistol, the knock like a knuckle on wood. “Get out!” Bob yelled. “Get out and don’t you ever set foot in my place again.”

  “I guess I will if I want to,” Kelly said.

  Bob stamped the floor and Kelly shied, cringing under his lifted arm. Bob laughed at the sight and gave up, walking back to his corner table with gamblers clapping him on the back and giving him their approval. And Bob was sitting with his Creede gang and getting only some of their jokes as he watched Kelly barge over to his long coat and then out into night and a snowstorm. Bob said, “It just goes on and on and on.”

  Dorothy said, “I can’t hear you,” but Bob said nothing more.

  Soapy Smith got into his black mink coat and straggled out after Kelly, catching up to him under an arc lamp and speaking compassionately. Blood was dripping off the man’s chin and he spit out chips of teeth like gravel. Kelly said, “Second time I’ve tried to get that son of a bitch,” and Soapy winged an arm around the man’s neck, saying, “Why don’t we see if we can’t get you stitched up.”

  BY THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON the justice of the peace had arranged for Soapy Smith to go upstairs to Bob Ford’s apartment and give his regards to the man who so coolly managed the agitator. Bob greeted the confidence man rather graciously, giving him a green leather chair and cognac in a brandy snifter and along with that some good advice about possible commercial enterprises in Creede if Smith was going straight.

  Soapy was delighted. “So you know who I am!”

  Bob shrugged. “You hear stories; not that I put much stock in what those goddamned newspapers say.”

  “You couldn’t, could you.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Soapy ignored that, and when the subject changed he ignored Bob’s business suggestions, neglected to acknowledge his questions, but only gave his attention to the objects in the room, moving about the apartment with a cigar in his mouth, weighing things and gliding his fingers over them, interrogating Bob about their cost and the city of acquisition. He was a dapper, appealing man with clipped brown hair and a two-inch brown beard, who appeared for their meeting in a black suit and a black cravat that was kept in place by a two-carat diamond stickpin. He was genial in dialogue and forbidding when his thoughts strayed off and as Bob gazed at the man’s arrogant progress around the room he couldn’t dodge the feeling that he was looking at a reincarnation of Jesse James, Jesse James, Jesse James.

  Bob asked, “Just what was it you had in mind with this meeting? Outside of making an inventory of all my worldly goods?”

  Soapy resettled in the green leather chair and swished cognac from cheek to cheek as he scoured Bob with his eyes. He asked, “Do you know what you shoulda done about Jesse?”

  “No; why don’t you tell me.”

  Soapy grinned. “I will then.” He crossed his legs and looked into the glass. “One night you oughta gone out and sorta lagged behind old Jess on your horse. You get your gun out and yell his name and once he spins around, bang! You coulda said you two had an argument and shot it out and you come out the victor. I guess you never thought of it though.”

  “I wasn’t big enough.”

  “You sure done the wrong thing, killing the man with his wife and kids close by, and his guns off and, well, you know what you did. You oughta said you were sorry.”

  “I figure if I’m sorry or not, that’s my own business.”

  “Don’t matter! You ought to apologize and give ’em what they want! Say you were on this train there was no getting off and you did the only thing you could do. A man looks at Bob Ford now and you know what he sees? He sees pride and greed and no regrets.”

  Bob scratched an itch at his neck. His grin was a dagger. “I’m going to make them forget all about ten years ago. I’m not going to be begging for forgiveness. I’m going to get people to respect me because of my accomplishments, just like Jesse did.”

  Soapy tilted his head to gaze out at sunlight and snow. He scratched at his beard and asked, “Do you know Joe Simmons?”

  “I’ve said pleased-to-meetcha.”

  “Joe and me we’ve been talking about you and Creede and how things are and we thought maybe we’d begin a saloon and gambling hall like yours over to Jimtown. I figured maybe I’d get rich by pushing de booze over de boards.”

  “Do you think there’s much call for another saloon? They say there’s one for every five men as it is.”

  Soapy grinned at Bob with more antagonism than joy. “I’m going to get in while the getting’s good and then make the others get out.”

  Bob struck a sulphur match off his shoe and stood it under a Corona cigar. “Just out of curiosity: how are you going to do that?”

  “My gang, Bob! I’m going to be the government! I’m going to run things around here! Y’all come over to the right way of thinking or, bingo, out you go!”

  Bob sucked on the cigar, squinting his left eye from the smoke. He changed his angle in the chair. “I forgot how to get scared ten years ago.”

  “I figured that too.”

  “I’ll give Creede to you though

  “You’re saying that because you know I can take it.”

  “Just stay away from the Exchange. You and your bodyguards and thugs. You don’t have guns enough.”

  Soapy poured his cognac into a green fern and then pulled himself to standing with the green arms of the chair. He adjusted his big black sombrero on the crown of his head and ground out his cigar on the rug. “You and me, we’re exactly alike. If the time comes for killing Robert Ford, I guess you know what I’ll do.”

  “Like I said: I’ve already been as scared as I’ll ever be.”

  And then Soapy went out and Bob went to the ceiling-high windows that looked over the street. He saw Soapy laughing with his bodyguards as he slogged through the snow; he saw shopkeepers greeting the man and giving way on the sidewalks. Bob slumped against the green wall and said without feeling, “Bang.”

  THE GOVERNMENT OF CREEDE WAS, in fact, reorganized. Soapy’s gang strong-armed the commercial men, jerked pedestria
ns into alleys and put guns to their ears as one of Soapy’s lieutenants told how things had changed; they got to new arrivals to Creede as soon as they stepped off the train and injured more than one man by twisting a wrist until it snapped. Soapy appointed himself as president of a Gambler’s Trust and imposed membership in it on every saloonkeeper except Robert Ford. He manipulated people and preferences to such a degree that within weeks his good friends were made mayor, city councilmen, coroner, and justice of the peace, his brother-in-law, John Light, was made city marshal, and as a special insult to Bob, ex-policeman Edward O. Kelly was made deputy sheriff of Bachelor, a mining camp on the mountain of that name, just three miles away. Meanwhile, Soapy Smith opened the Orleans Club in the east canyon section called Jimtown, financing purchase of the gambling hall with the monthly percentages paid him for municipal operating expenses. And he did what he could to get Bob to resign his ownership of the Exchange Club: rocks with auguring messages tied to them crashed through the batwing doors at closings, glowering men in grizzly bear coats slouched outside the club with shotguns all day and followed Bob anywhere he went, and on April 3rd, 1892, the geography on which the club had been constructed was designated by the city government as the site of a forthcoming school and the gambling hall was ordered closed.

  Bob ignored the ruling and gave not an inch to Smith’s commands and injunctions, and yet his bearing changed as his influence lessened, he was accused of cowardice and accommodation, of living up to his pusillanimous reputation, and he kept to his apartment all day or in a private room at night, getting drunk on his overnight whiskey as he pensively flipped over playing cards, looking at his destiny in every king and jack.

  He complained to Dorothy that despising Robert Ford had become a peculiar kind of sport. He sometimes wondered in a self-pitying way whom people would peer upon, snipe at, sneer about, threaten, if Bob Ford weren’t around. Even as he circulated in his own saloon he knew that smiles disappeared when he passed by, that it was his overweening pride that the patrons whispered about, that it was quiet jeering that snagged their mouths like a fishhook, that there was always someone to spy on him and repeat his every word to Smith, to tally his sins and trespasses. And even Dorothy seemed unsympathetic, she seemed to perceive Bob as an impostor, as a boy of impulses but no principles, incapable and apprehensive and forever repeating the same mistakes.