They packed light. No extra change of clothes; one could always get a garment laundered, and new clothes could be purchased when needed. Revolvers, their sidearms of choice, were cleaned and oiled, leather ammunition belts filled. Some of the gang carried as many as four revolvers, and they were the best killing hardware to be had. The Colt Single Action Army and Smith & Wesson Model #3 Russian (notable for its break-open design and automatic cartridge ejector) were favorites. And they preferred them with nickel plating, which gave a mirror finish, and ivory grips. In other words, they liked fancy guns, even if most people never caught the slightest glimpse of their weapons.
The train station or stations the gang departed from are not known, but at St. Joseph, Missouri, the outlaws were all together. From that point, their passenger train rolled north to Sioux City, Iowa, the shiny tracks hugging the Missouri River Valley. At Sioux City, the outlaws transferred to the St. Paul & Sioux City Railroad for the 280 miles to the Minnesota capital. Their train sped northeast through prime Iowa farmland, but soon after crossing the Minnesota border, the boys began noticing the sloughs and lakes the state was noted for.
East of Mankato was the famed Big Woods, a heavy forest of elms, sugar maples, oaks, and thick shrubs one hundred miles long and forty-five miles wide. There were roads through the Big Woods, but they were poor, and, when muddy, nearly impassable. But more awful than the roads were the swarms of mosquitoes and the impressively large deerflies. And one could forget about any kind of breeze; the woods kept the air still and sticky. The James-Younger gang was used to the brush, but that was Missouri, where most of them had been born and raised. This was altogether different. To get the lay of the land was no easy feat for a newcomer, especially when the forest all looked the same and a horizon was nowhere to be seen.
But the boys had no plans for the Big Woods. For now, it was the Twin Cities that occupied their attention.
On August 23, a Wednesday, a J. C. Horton and H. L. Nest, both of Nashville, Tennessee, checked into the Nicollet House, an upscale hotel on Minneapolis’s busy Washington Avenue. The next day, three more men, W. G. Huddleson, J. C. King, and John Wood, scrawled their names in the register. Huddleson said he was from Maryland, and King and Wood identified themselves as Virginians. But everything these men wrote was a lie. The James-Younger gang was cautiously moving about Minneapolis in small groups.
But other than changing their names at the hotel, these outlaws did not seem to care that just about everything about them drew attention. It started with their striking physiques and the confident way they carried themselves. And their dress was different from most anyone you would find in Minnesota. They tucked their pants into knee-high boots, brandished long spurs, and wore ulster dusters. These unbleached linen dusters did exactly what the name implied: they kept the dust and dirt of the road off one’s clothes. But the boys preferred dusters for another reason: the light, loose-fitting garments concealed their heavy six-shooters and ammunition belts.
Locals also picked up on the gang’s Missouri drawl and quaint speech. The outlaws told people they were “grangers,” meaning farmers, but their uncalloused, white hands said otherwise. As did their vest pockets flush with cash, which they spent freely. One afternoon they threw money to a poor organ grinder from the hotel’s second-floor balcony. The grinder eventually walked away with $8 (a week’s board cost $5).
If all this was not enough, the Missouri outlaws didn’t remove their wide-brimmed hats when they entered the hotel’s dining room, and they committed several other social faux pas. The hotel managers thought this was all an act and were convinced the “grangers” were actually “roughs.” But they still took the men’s money and kept the suspicions to themselves.
Some of the boys spent their leisure time gambling, poker being a favorite game—saving for a rainy day had never been the gang’s strong suit. Others sought out the female offerings of Minneapolis. One night, Jesse and two others stepped into a horse-drawn hack outside the Nicollet and told the driver to take them to the nearest bordello. That was Mollie Ellsworth’s establishment, just two blocks away.
Twenty-seven-year-old Mollie was dressing for the evening when Jesse walked into her room. He stared at the madam for some time as she finished dressing. Finally, he asked her if she had not operated a brothel in St. Louis. And was her name not Kitty Traverse? Surprised, Mollie turned to face the man, suddenly recognizing him.
“What are you doing up here?” she blurted out.
“Oh,” Jesse said, “nothing. I am going out into the country for a few days and will be back soon; then you and I will go to the Centennial.”
Mollie had known Jesse for years, or so she claimed, and she had a good idea there was something more to his presence in Minnesota than stopping by her establishment.
“You don’t want to drop onto any ‘cases’ around here,” she said, meaning the outlaw should be careful to stay out of trouble.
“Oh,” Jesse replied, “you know I never get left [caught].”
She couldn’t help but notice the several revolvers he was carrying and asked what he was going to do with them. He told her he needed them for “a man that he knew up town.”
Mollie again began to warn Jesse, but he cut her off with one of those peculiar Missouri phrases: “I shall die like a dog or eat the hatchet.”
Mollie also saw the big wad of cash Jesse carried—she was a working girl, after all—and she said she could tell he was doing very well.
Jesse, with a bit of a wry smile, said “he generally had everything he wanted.”
Mollie never said the two of them had sex that night; it was not the kind of thing one would make public. But Jesse and the boys hadn’t come there that night for pleasant conversation. Later, Mollie did share with a reporter an interesting detail about Jesse’s footwear that would have been difficult to know unless his boots had been off. She said the boots weren’t the same size. “He has a small foot,” she added, “and could wear my shoe.”
Just ten miles away, in St. Paul, some of the gang stayed at the Merchants Hotel and patronized a stylish gambling establishment on East Third that was owned by John P. Chinn and his brother-in-law George Morgan. Chinn, who everyone knew as Colonel Jack Chinn, was a large, dark-skinned, powerful man who dressed quite elegantly and was remembered for the flashy diamonds he wore. He had a well-deserved reputation as a master knife fighter (many compared him to the famed Jim Bowie). Chinn perfected a type of switchblade fighting knife that he loved to demonstrate.
The outlaws’ visits to the Chinn & Morgan place may have been more than happenstance. Both Chinn and his brother-in-law were from the Harrodsburg, Kentucky, area, the same region Quantrill and his dwindling band of bushwhackers galloped over in the waning days of the Civil War. Chinn had joined the Confederate army as a teenager, and although little is known of his military service, it is possible that he and Frank met sometime in 1865. If not then, the James boys made almost annual trips to Kentucky after the war, and they could very well have encountered Chinn on one of those excursions. If Chinn was indeed a friend or acquaintance to the Jameses, he would have been a most significant source of information about southern Minnesota.
One warm evening, two of the outlaws, probably Bob Younger and Bill Chadwell, created a stir when a floor manager, noting the stuffiness of the gambling hall, suggested that they remove their dusters. The outlaws readily obliged, but they did not stop with the dusters. They unbuckled their heavy cartridge belts and laid their guns and knives on the table. The arsenal suddenly on display took the manager’s breath away, and there were plenty of stares and murmurs from the patrons. But the tension in the room lasted only for a moment. The doors were locked, the guns covered up, and the sounds of shuffling cards and roulette wheels resumed. The game went all night and into the next day, with the outlaws losing $200 to the house.
Jesse may have tried his luck at Chinn & Morgan’s gaming tables, but the jackpot he was after was not a stack of chips—it was attorney Sa
m Hardwicke. He was referring to this when he told Mollie Ellsworth his pistols were for “a man that he knew up town.” That man was not in Minneapolis, where Mollie ran her bordello, but in the neighboring city of St. Paul, but this was surely a deception on the outlaw’s part. Jesse was far too smart to tell a prostitute what he was really up to.
Hardwicke lived at 43 St. Paul Street, which was in the far northwest corner of the city. That was the address published in the Liberty Tribune. His law office, which he shared with A. K. Barnum, was at 11 Wabasha Street, in the heart of the business district and just a few blocks from the Merchants Hotel. Jesse would have had no problem locating both addresses, but he wanted to kill Hardwicke without getting caught. Sending a slug through the attorney’s brain in broad daylight in the heart of downtown St. Paul was the last thing he wanted to do.
Jesse probably started casing Hardwicke’s home and his office. And Sam Hardwicke, his mind occupied with the normal thoughts of work and family, would have gone about his day without the slightest inkling that those burning blue eyes were on him, that the terrible menace he had fled just three months before had followed him to Minnesota. Yet, for whatever reason, Jesse failed to assassinate his quarry.
Perhaps Hardwicke was out of town and Jesse never saw him. But more than likely Jesse never felt he had the perfect opportunity to strike. The same thing happened when he traveled to Chicago to kill Allan Pinkerton. According to Jesse’s cousin, George Hite Jr., Jesse spent four months in Chicago, “but he never had a chance to do it like he wanted to.” Jesse wanted Pinkerton to know who his assassin was. “It would do no good if I couldn’t tell him about it before he died,” Jesse told Hite. “I had a dozen chances to shoot him when he didn’t know it. I wanted to give him a fair chance, but the opportunity never came.”
Maybe that’s what happened with Hardwicke, although that does not mean that Jesse gave up entirely on his plans. The gang had no set date for leaving Minnesota, and Jesse always believed that God would deliver his enemies into his hands.
After some high-priced fun, the boys looked more and more to the next haul, and the sooner the better. They sent small detachments into the Minnesota countryside with two purposes. They needed good, fast horses, and that would take time to locate and buy, and they needed information: What towns had banks? How prosperous were the communities? Were there good escape routes?
On August 24, a Thursday, one of the gang walked into the express office in Red Wing, Minnesota, forty-five miles southeast of St. Paul. He carried a small box of cigars and gave his name as Kelly. He told the express clerk he wanted to ship the box to a Jefferson City, Missouri, address. The clerk’s eyes bulged when that address turned out to be cell number eight in the Missouri State Penitentiary. But the outlaw was very matter-of-fact about this, telling the clerk the convict was a “pal” of his, and he was not ashamed to say so. The clerk didn’t know how to respond, but he took the package and sent it off in care of the prison’s warden.
Which member of the James-Younger gang shipped the package remains unknown, but he went back to his outlaw confederates, told them what he’d seen, and two days later, four men wearing linen dusters arrived in Red Wing on the noon train from St. Paul. These men—Jesse, Frank, Clell Miller, and Jim Younger—spent the weekend there, purchasing four fine horses (two sorrels and two bays), new saddles, bridles, and a map. At the local gun shop, Jesse and the boys surprised gunsmith Charles Witney when they asked for .44-caliber pistol cartridges. None of his regular customers shot such a large pistol.
The boys were a tight-lipped group, but Witney and more than a few of the townspeople could not stop themselves from asking the men their business. The outlaws gave conflicting answers, politely telling some they were cattle drovers on their way to St. Paul and others that they were Kentuckians bound for the Black Hills to search for gold. At their hotel, one of the men got the guests’ attention when he said he’d bet $1,000 that Minnesota would go for Democrat Samuel J. Tilden over Rutherford B. Hayes in the presidential election. Someone should have taken the bet.
Jesse and the boys left Red Wing on Monday, August 28, three riding off in a northerly direction while the fourth boarded a stage.
On that same Monday and the Tuesday after, Bob Younger and Bill Chadwell went shopping in St. Paul. One of them stopped in William Burkhard’s gun shop on East Third Street and bought a new Bowie knife, lightly gliding his thumb across the knife’s edge several times before slipping it into his belt. Younger and Chadwell then went to at least three livery stables before deciding on two “splendid” mounts, a black and a bay. They then bought two nearly new saddles (McClellan style, one bearing a Masonic emblem) and bridles. One of the outlaws was seen trying out the black steed on Wabasha Street, his duster flapping in the wind as he spurred the horse, urging it into a lively canter.
The livery owner, Edward McKinney, later described Younger and Chadwell “as fully six feet high, with keen eyes, quick movements, good talkers, smart in dealing, liberal with their money, and paying prices asked without question.” All in all, he said, they made “an appearance that was so remarkable and unusual that they at once attracted attention.”
McKinney asked the boys where they hailed from. Missouri, they answered, and said they were in Minnesota “just to look around.” Well, McKinney offered, they were doing the right thing by riding horseback, as riding was necessary to keep up one’s health. That caused one of the outlaws to burst out laughing.
“Do I look like a man who was out of health?” he asked.
While Bob and Chadwell were shopping in St. Paul, Cole Younger and Charlie Pitts were at St. Peter, a town of three thousand that is seventy-five miles southwest of the Twin Cities on the St. Paul & Sioux City Railroad. Cole and Pitts spent most of the last week of August there, lodging at a hotel called the American House. The hotel employees and guests didn’t know what to make of these guys—they claimed to be cattle dealers—and it was not just their dress and language. They had been awfully particular about the kind of horses they were after. And there had been a curious discussion between Cole and the hotel clerk. Cole asked if St. Peter was not a rather dead town. The clerk assured Cole it was not. The outlaw then said that maybe the reason it seemed so dead was the town had no bank. The clerk corrected Cole immediately. St. Peter had a fine bank, the First National, and it was just a half block from there. Cole thanked the clerk and said he felt like going for a drink at Evanson’s saloon. But on his way to the saloon, Cole was seen pausing in the street and “closely scrutiniz[ing] the bank.”
Children noticed these men as well. Cole and Pitts were enjoying a couple of cigars outside the American House one afternoon when some boys stopped in front of them, cocked their heads, and stared. Cole chomped down on his cigar, pulled a coin from his pocket, and flipped it to the ground. “It belongs to the first one who gets it,” he said. The boys snapped out of their trance and dived for the coin. Pitts tossed the next coin, causing another mad scramble. The outlaws laughed and dug in their pockets for more coins, tossing all that they had, one at a time. It was a good show while it lasted.
Younger and Pitts eventually found the horses they wanted just across the Minnesota River in Kasota. They bought saddles in St. Peter and spent each day exercising and training the new mounts. During one of these sessions, Cole came upon a beaming young girl who ran up to his horse and told him she could ride horseback. Cole reached down, grabbed the surprised girl, and pulled her up and onto the saddle, in front of him. As they rode up and down for the next few minutes, the girl told Cole her name was Horace Greeley Perry. He thought that was a big name for such a little tot. “I won’t always be little,” she told the outlaw. “I’m going to be a great big girl, and be a newspaperman like my pa.” Little Miss Perry’s father had published a newspaper in St. Peter since 1866, and she would grow up to become an editor and publisher herself—and write about the outlaw Youngers.
Outwardly, Cole and Charlie were cool and relaxed, but they were more
than a little worried because Bob Younger and Bill Chadwell were supposed to have met them in St. Peter. But as days passed without them showing up, Cole thought they might have been apprehended. He had been scanning the newspapers for any arrest reports that described his little brother and Chadwell. What Cole did not know was that Bob and Bill had missed their train, which had led to their purchase of horses in St. Paul. Two of the gang did show up in St. Peter on Friday, September 1, but they were not Bob and Chadwell; their identities remain unknown. These two strangers had been in St. Peter only a few hours and were seen buying a couple of rubber coats before riding out of town to the west. They’d had plenty of time to case the small town and its bank, though.
Cole and Pitts, finally having had enough of waiting, left St. Peter on Saturday, September 2, also heading west. That very evening, Bob and Chadwell rode into town, registering at St. Peter’s Nicollet House (not to be confused with Minneapolis’s Nicollet House) under the names G. H. King and B. T. Cooper. They passed themselves off as sportsmen hunters. Their fine horses and new-looking McClellan saddles, fringed saddle blankets, and new bridles caught the eyes of several townspeople. They were friendly and, as reported later, “made themselves familiar with everyone.” That was how they found out what their other gang members had been doing before they got there. Bob and Chadwell then went straight to the American House and pumped the clerk for information about Cole and Pitts and found out they had just missed them. Yet Bob and Chadwell didn’t appear to be in any hurry. They did not ride out of St. Peter until the next afternoon.
Of all the towns the gang members visited, Mankato seemed the best prospect for a holdup. Three railroads intersected in the prosperous city, which was situated on a bend of the Minnesota River, eighty-six miles southwest of St. Paul. The seat of Blue Earth County, one of the most fertile regions in the state, Mankato was twice the size of St. Peter—and it had three banks. It had several hotels, the Clifton House being the best with its “commodious billiard room” (lodging $2 per day). Equally appealing was the notorious brothel run by twenty-nine-year-old Irishman Jack O’Neil. The bane of Mankato’s moral majority, it was located in the woods just across the river, which was outside the city limits.
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