Suddenly, Pitts was at the door and took careful aim as Bunker ran across an open lot. This time, his shot struck Bunker in the right shoulder.
“The sensation of being shot was as though some one had struck me a sharp blow with a piece of board,” Bunker recalled. “There was a jar and a sting as I felt the bullet going through the bones of my shoulder.”
Bunker staggered, caught his balance, and kept running.
Henry Wheeler.
(Collection of the author)
After ducking into his father’s drugstore, young Henry Wheeler had focused on grabbing the nearest weapon. But when he went for the rifle he kept inside the store, he realized he’d left it at home that day. Then he remembered an old breechloader he had seen at the Dampier House hotel, just two stores to the north. He ran through a back alley and into the hotel and grabbed the gun from the baggage room.
A .50-caliber Smith carbine, it was the type issued to Federal cavalrymen at the beginning of the Civil War. Even years later, Wheeler never saw the irony of using such a weapon against a bunch of ex-bushwhackers who were still living that war, as if time had taken a detour before the Confederate surrender.
But Wheeler wasn’t sure the grimy thing would even shoot. It took a paper cartridge that held both the blackpowder charge and a heavy conical bullet. After inserting the cartridge in the chamber, a copper percussion cap had to be placed on the gun’s nipple, beneath the cocked hammer. Wheeler got four cartridges and caps from the desk clerk, flew up the stairs to the third floor, and ducked into a room with an open window. Down below and to his left he saw the robbers in the street.
Wheeler, panting hard, his arms shaking, raised the carbine to his shoulder and sighted down its barrel at Jim Younger on his horse. Wheeler was having trouble steadying the carbine’s muzzle and keeping its open sights on the moving target, but he pulled the trigger and the old gun answered with a sharp crack. Wheeler immediately lifted his head from the stock and saw a small puff of dust on the street where his bullet had struck the hard-packed dirt. His shot had gone high, just missing Younger. He inserted another cartridge and placed a percussion cap on the nipple. This time he put the gun on the windowsill to steady it.
He aimed at Clell Miller, who was bent over in the saddle, doing something to his left stirrup. Because his shot at Jim Younger had gone high, Wheeler aimed low on Clell and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot cut through the noise on the street and Clell felt a blow like a hammer as the heavy lead round punched through his shoulder, severing his subclavian artery.
A fanciful engraving of the Northfield Raid from The Northfield Tragedy, 1876.
(Robert G. McCubbin Collection)
Clell fell off his horse but managed to get up on his knees. He appeared to be yelling orders to the other robbers before his heart finally pumped the last of his blood, and he toppled over onto his face. Henry Wheeler, the medical student, had killed a man.
Meanwhile, the sounds of broken glass and ricocheting bullets mixed with the gun blasts, the urgent shouts, and the clopping of the shod horses as the outlaws raced back and forth in front of the bank. As bushwhackers, Jesse, Cole, and the others had fought as light cavalry, making fast, terrifying charges that struck fear into Missouri militia.
Their surprise attacks and ambushes had usually sent the Federals breaking and running, the bushwhackers riding them down, firing their pistols right and left. If the Federals were ever able to hold fast, the bushwhackers galloped away, disappearing in the Missouri woods and hills to fight again.
But here in Northfield, they were being forced to hold their ground while waiting on the inside men to come out of the bank. And their revolvers were no match for Wheeler’s and Manning’s shoulder guns, which were far more accurate at greater distances. And while the townspeople were shooting to kill, the outlaws’ shots were really meant to frighten, to scare away, to buy time—at least in the beginning.
Division Street, eighty feet wide, had quickly become hell’s shooting gallery with the outlaws the targets. With each passing second, the gang’s situation became more precarious, and they became increasingly desperate.
Cole jumped down from his horse and ran over to Clell Miller. He kept wondering what the hell was taking the boys in the bank so long. As he rolled Clell over to check his wound, Cole felt a searing pain in his left hip, as if stabbed by a knife. It was a bullet from Anselm Manning’s Remington. Manning had popped the jammed shell casing out of his gun with a wooden ramrod from his store and then raced back to the corner. Cole was lucky the shot had not done more damage than it did, as Manning’s bullet had first struck one of the stairway’s balusters, taking some of the energy off the lead bullet, as well as deflecting its path.
Cole took Miller’s pistols and remounted—they needed to get out of this town. Riding up near the bank, he shouted to the boys inside, “Come out of the bank!”
Manning reloaded his Remington, the shell he had used on Cole ejecting perfectly. Adelbert Ames was now at his back, providing calm advice and encouragement. Ames had encountered the gang members as he was crossing the bridge a few minutes earlier while on his way to the mill. He had noticed the strangers in the dusters but thought nothing more of them. But, a few minutes later, he had heard the shout, “They are robbing the bank.” He hurried to Mill Square, where he saw the smoke in the air and Manning with his gun at the corner.
Manning again peeked out beyond the stairs to see where the robbers were.
“I saw a man up the street more than half way up the block who was watching the opposite side of the street from me,” Manning recalled. “It was evidently this man’s business to guard that side of the street.”
That man was Bill Chadwell. Manning brought his gun to his shoulder. His hands were trembling, sweat running down his face. From the Dampier House, a traveling salesman watching Manning called out, “Take good aim before you fire.”
Manning squeezed the trigger, and the Remington bucked against his shoulder. In the split second before he dodged back around the corner, Manning thought he saw Chadwell wince.
Ermina Kingman, looking out from a store window down the block, saw Manning’s shot pierce Chadwell’s chest.
“I saw him [Chadwell] reel in the saddle and nearly fall off. He threw his left arm around the horse’s neck, and that turned the horse up street again and he came as far as my door, where he fell off and died, after a short period of intense suffering.”
One of the outlaws rode up to the dying man, who was stretched out, quivering, holding his upper body off the ground with his arms. The outlaw dismounted and tried to speak to Chadwell, who suddenly rolled over on his back and did not move again. The outlaw hastily grabbed Chadwell’s cartridge belt and revolvers and got back on his horse. Chadwell’s mount had run off around the block.
Cole Younger, with a grim look on his face, again rode up to the bank door. “For God’s sake come out,” he yelled. “They are shooting us all to pieces.”
Nellie Ames thought she heard gunfire or fireworks. The forty-one-year-old wife of bank director John T. Ames (Adelbert’s brother) was driving a small, one-horse carriage up Fifth Street at a little after 2:00 P.M. As she got to the middle of the block between Water and Division Streets, she saw Alonzo Bunker dash out from an open lot, holding his shoulder with his hand.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Bunker?” she asked from her carriage.
“I’m shot!” Bunker said without stopping.
Nellie began to pull up on the reins when a man ran up to her, waving his hands excitedly.
“Mrs. Ames, get out of that carriage quick,” he said. “You’ll be killed.”
He helped Nellie down and another man led her horse away.
Nellie hesitated, her curiosity seemingly getting the better of her. The sounds of gunfire became louder as did the yelling and the trampling of horses’ hooves. Suddenly, horsemen swept into the intersection in front of her, their revolvers glistening in the sun, firing in different directions. One was
Cole Younger, a large, muscular man with sandy whiskers.
Nellie also saw several men clambering up out of a stairwell from the stone building to her left, on the corner. The stairwell led to a basement saloon, and these men had either heard the gunfire or had been alerted to the robbery in progress. The last one to come up was a recent Swedish immigrant named Nicolaus Gustavson. He understood little English and was drunk. He weaved toward the intersection and the robbers on horseback.
Cole Younger wheeled his horse around. Nellie, her eyes now riveted on Cole, was just yards from him.
“Lady,” he shouted, “get off the street or you will be killed.”
Cole then lowered his revolver and aimed directly at Gustavson. Cole had already seen two of his gang members killed by the people of Northfield, and his wounds, especially the one in the hip, hurt like the devil.
Filled with wrath, he was no longer inclined to use his revolver simply to frighten—and Gustavson was too easy a target.
Nellie saw Cole fire—the crack of the shot thundering off the buildings—and Gustavson toppled over backward. Cole’s bullet had struck the right side of Gustavson’s head at his ear, fracturing the skull and tearing a path just underneath his scalp before exiting at the top of his head. Still alive, Gustavson lay there bleeding in the street, the entire left side of his body paralyzed.
The two men who had forced Nellie out of her carriage now took hold of her arms. She could hardly walk, but they got her off the street and into a nearby blacksmith shop. But as Nellie came to her senses, she promptly went into a panic because she remembered her husband was supposed to be at the bank that afternoon.
View of the Scriver Block from Division Street showing the exterior stairway going to the second floor. The First National Bank is just to the right of the storefront with the awning (Theodore Miller’s undertaking and furniture shop).
(Northfield Historical Society)
Nellie burst out of the shop doors and ran across the lots behind the bank to Mill Square. When she turned toward Division Street, she saw several men gathered at the Scriver corner, including Manning, with his rifle, and her brother-in-law, Adelbert.
Nellie rushed to the corner and then headed around it to the bank. The men hunkered there grabbed her and pulled her back. Whether or not her husband was in the First National, the battle was still raging.
The robbers inside the bank may or may not have heard Cole Younger’s first call to come out, but they definitely heard the second. And there was no mistaking the desperation in his voice. Bob Younger did not have to look at Frank to see what he wanted to do, and neither did Charlie, who had reappeared after chasing Bunker. They both jumped over the counter and hurried to the door and were outside before Frank, who hated to accept defeat, began his exit.
The chaos in the bank was nothing compared to the pandemonium they encountered on the street. Immediately in front of them lay Clell Miller’s body and Bob’s dead horse. Bullets whistled up and down. Jesse, Jim, and Cole dashed back and forth through a haze of gun smoke. The nostrils of their horses flared, sucking in oxygen, and the animals’ eyes bulged from their heads as they sensed the death around them.
In addition to the gunfire, large rocks arced through the air. Elias Hobbs, unable to find a gun, had begun shouting, “Stone ’em! Stone ’em!” Fifty-nine-year-old lawyer Truman Streeter and a twenty-six-year-old black man named Ben Richardson also began scavenging for rocks and hurling them at the robbers.
At the same time, Bob ran down the sidewalk along the side of the Scriver toward the stairway and Manning, who was using the stairs as cover.
“Kill the white-livered son of a bitch on the corner,” one of the outlaws shouted.
As Bob swung his revolver up to shoot Manning, the hardware dealer leveled his rifle at outlaw, who promptly darted behind a box beneath the stairs. Bob kept his revolver up, its hammer at full cock, waiting for a chance to fire. For a few seconds the two weaved back and forth in a deadly game of peekaboo, until Cole yelled at Bob to shoot through the stairs. Manning retreated behind the stone corner as Bob’s bullets popped jagged wood splinters off the staircase.
Henry Wheeler, looking down from the third floor of the Dampier, had inserted the third of his four paper cartridges into the old Smith carbine and placed a percussion cap on its nipple. Seeing the duel between Bob and Manning, he pulled the gun’s large hammer back and looked down the barrel, centering the weapon’s sights on Bob. The carbine cracked and the outlaw jumped, the lead slug slamming through his right elbow. Bob’s gun arm fell limp to his side, but in an incredible display of grit, he switched his pistol to his left hand and blasted again at the staircase.
Wheeler reached for his last cartridge, but it had fallen off the bed. The paper of the cartridge had ruptured with the fall, spilling the powder all over the floor. Wheeler could not fire another shot.
With Bob so close, Manning could not risk moving out beyond the corner and needed a different strategy. At the rear of the Lee & Hitchcock store, a side door opened onto Division Street. If Manning went through the store and out that door, he might be able to pick off Bob from behind—that is, if Bob stayed put under the stairs. Manning thought it was worth a try and he left his position at the corner.
Moments after Bob and Charlie exited the bank, Frank James let go of Heywood and ran over to the counter, pulling himself up by the railing. Heywood, his head and neck bloody, staggered over to the cashier’s desk.
Poised at the top of the counter, Frank turned and pointed his pistol at Heywood. He blamed the failure of the robbery on this damned fool bank employee. He fired at Heywood but somehow missed. Heywood sank into the chair at the desk, or maybe he was dodging behind the desk. Wilcox simply stood there petrified.
But Frank was far from done. He again pulled back the hammer of his revolver, its shiny cylinder rotating to bring another loaded chamber before the barrel. And with “the expression of a very devil in his face,” Wilcox recalled, Frank “put his pistol almost at Heywood’s head and fired the fatal shot.”
The bullet entered Heywood’s left temple, spraying blood and brain matter all over the desk. He tumbled forward and fell behind the counter. Facedown, his body heaved slightly as his lungs continued to breathe for some minutes, blood running out of the hole in his skull. Heywood had prevented another St. Albans, just like he said he would, but his heroics had cost him his life.
Frank leaped over the counter and ran for the front door just as Cole was yelling, again, for him to come out. Wilcox flew out the back of the bank and across the alley to Manning’s store.
Frank, shocked to find two men killed, was relieved to see that his brother Jesse was not one of the casualties. He grabbed the reins to his horse and climbed into the saddle. Charlie Pitts had already mounted his steed. The outlaws shouted to one another and began to move south down the street. Bob turned and stumbled after them.
“My God, boys,” he cried, “you are not going to leave—I am shot!”
Cole spurred his horse and galloped back to his brother, who grasped Cole’s outstretched arm with his left hand and swung up behind Cole, cursing in pain as he righted himself.
Anselm Manning, now in the Lee & Hitchcock store, warily approached the side entrance. It had been open earlier, but once the shooting started, a brave clerk had crawled to the door and closed it, having the presence of mind to spin the combination on the store’s safe. The robbers had been near this door many times because it was right next to the bank entrance, and Manning knew he would be exposing himself to those on the street if he opened it, but as he crept close to the door, he noticed the gunfire had stopped.
As he slowly pulled open the door, he looked out and the street appeared to be deserted. He peeked his head out and looked to the left at the staircase—no Bob Younger. Manning stood up and cautiously walked out onto the sidewalk, his rifle at the ready. He looked down Division Street to the south, over a block distant, and saw the robbers riding away. He was tempted to try o
ne last shot with his Remington, but townspeople were already spilling onto the street and gathering in clusters, trying to see the robbers before they disappeared. Manning lowered his rifle and began to take in the carnage around him.
The Northfield Raid had lasted no more than ten minutes, perhaps as few as seven. Albert H. Taisey, who walked out of the bank only a few moments before the robbery, missed the whole thing. Hearing the gunfire as he turned a corner, he thought it was nothing more than a few boys having some fun, so he continued on toward Carleton College. Returning to Division Street immediately after the bandits had left, he was shocked to learn that “the gentleman whom he had so recently pleasantly parted from was a corpse.”
News of the robbery rapidly spread through the small town. The fire and church bells were rung loudly. Margaret Evans, Dean of Women at Carleton, had been sitting in her room in the women’s dormitory just two blocks from Mill Square when the shooting erupted. She heard the loud popping but did not know quite what to make of it.
When the sounds did not let up, she decided to find out what they might be. She went to the main door, and as she opened it, the matron and a wife of a college trustee rushed in. Both women could hardly speak, having run from Division Street with news of the raid. Finally, the matron got out the words “Keep the girls off the street,” and then she collapsed in a faint.
All kinds of wild thoughts went through Evans’s mind when she learned exactly what had happened. Evans thought the robbers might attack the college next. She organized her girls to defend themselves. They gathered the fire axes they had in the building and scrambled to the third floor, where they huddled together. Evans shortly learned that the outlaws had fled Northfield, but she still kept her girls inside and did so for several nights following. She and the matron slept alone on the lower floor as guards.
Shot All to Hell Page 9