Shot All to Hell

by Mark Lee Gardner

  Detective Bresette’s squad of St. Paul policemen had traveled as far as Blakely, thirty-five miles north of Mankato, when they got word about the Dunning encounter. Bresette’s manhunters piled out of the smoking car and waited anxiously at the depot for the next train going south.

  In Mankato, twenty men started out after the robbers just minutes after Henry Shaubut brought the news to town. The posse traveled to the last place Dunning had seen the bandits and immediately found their trail. The problem was they were a good two hours behind the gang. As this small party scoured the timber, hundreds of men converged on Mankato in response to the telegram calling for help. In addition to the Minneapolis and St. Paul squads, parties of various sizes were being commanded by the sheriffs of Waseca, Finch, Blue Earth, Winona, Faribault, Rice, and Ramsey Counties, and countless more volunteers were coming from neighboring towns and farms. By the end of the day, more than a thousand men were actively hunting the robbers. The pursuit of the James-Younger band had become the largest manhunt in U.S. history, and everyone involved sensed it was nearing a thrilling conclusion.

  Throughout the afternoon, Mankato’s streets were filled with “eager, excited, expectant crowds, formed of armed men, hurrying to and fro with stolid, firm resolution depicted on their faces,” reported the Dispatch’s correspondent. “Wherever two persons were seen conversing in the street, there would be a rush of dozens of excited inquirers, and ‘What’s the news?’ ‘Are they caught?’ ‘Have they shot them?’ and a host of similar queries would be repeated at once. Every street corner had its throng of crowding, pushing, attentive listeners, and every group had its orator, who was either detailing in wondrous eloquence some new phase of the situation, some impossible movement of the fugitives, or suggesting some sage course of action.”

  In order not to repeat past mistakes, Mankato’s Civil War hero, Brevet Brigadier General Edmund Mann Pope, was chosen to take charge of the manhunt, which now focused on an area of roughly ten square miles. Pope, a veteran of Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, and numerous other battles, stationed guards at bridges, crossroads, and little-used trails—any point that might serve as an escape route—and ordered patrols on area roads and along the railroad lines. The general’s militarized zone made it seem that “Mankato expected a siege of the combined forces of all the hostile savages paying allegiance to Sitting Bull,” wrote a reporter, “rather than that the men were called out to capture six fugitive robbers.”

  After the fugitives watched Dunning depart for home, they continued toward Mankato, a cold rain pelting their broad-brimmed hats. Making sure to stay in the woods and out of sight, the men reached the outskirts of town, where they halted and waited for nightfall. They saw their pursuers many times through the undergrowth, waiting with their revolvers drawn and fingers on the triggers. But the manhunters would eventually drift by and out of hearing.

  The gang decided not to detour around Mankato. They did not know the woods and the river crossings, and the effort would add miles to their journey. But they knew the tracks of the St. Paul & Sioux City Railroad ran through Mankato. They had come to Minnesota on these very tracks. They didn’t need a compass or a map; these steel rails could guide them out of the state. The trick, though, would be slipping through Mankato (population six thousand) undetected. The whole town had been on high alert for the appearance of the robbers since early that morning. It was audacious and risky for even one man to attempt it, let alone six—but doing something like this was part of the James-Younger gang’s fabled escapades.

  Shortly before midnight, the outlaws entered Mankato from the east. They reached the railroad tracks near the large brick building of the Mankato Linseed Oil Company, at the head of Elm Street. The bandits looked frantically along the railroad siding for a handcar, which would have taken them rapidly down the line, but suddenly the mill’s steam whistle sounded a strong, shrill blast. The men ducked and spun about, looking in all directions. They thought they had been spotted, and the whistle was a warning to the town. The outlaws hurriedly retreated to a point behind the mill. But the whistle had not been an alarm; it had sounded to let the mill workers know the clock had struck 12:00 A.M. The gang soon realized that they were not being pursued, and, slowly and silently, they began once more circling back to the railroad a few blocks to the south. At one point, the outlaws had been no more than four blocks from General Pope’s headquarters in the Clifton House hotel.

  The night, according to one correspondent, was “of almost Egyptian darkness.” As the hunted men neared the railroad bridge over the Blue Earth River, they cautiously studied the approach, fully expecting the bridge to have watchmen, but they were relieved to find it unguarded—or so they thought. At approximately 2:00 A.M., the six men marched across the high trestlework in single file, disappearing on the other side of the river. Incredibly, the James-Younger gang had passed safely through Mankato and crossed the Blue Earth River, despite all of General Pope’s preparations and manpower to prevent something like that from happening.

  Pope had arranged for a strong force to be stationed at the bridge, but the railroad authorities told him they would have their own people there, so Pope redistributed his men to other points. The railroad’s guards consisted of two section hands and a boy, posted out of sight. The boy clearly saw the outlaws step onto the trestle, and he urged his companions to shoot. Instead, the section hands turned and left the poor boy to fend for himself (the men would later defend their actions by saying they were “insufficiently armed”). The boy acted like a true hero and ran to the county wagon bridge a short distance downstream and told Pope’s men the outlaws had just crossed the river. A messenger galloped to the Clifton House with the news, which hit the general like a load of Rebel canister shot. But he knew it would do no good to send men out in the soupy darkness. They would take up the hunt at first light and hope to God they could find a trail or other evidence of the fugitives and somehow salvage this fiasco.

  Immediately after crossing the river, the outlaws discovered a watermelon patch nearby and helped themselves, pausing briefly next to the tracks to devour their booty. Cole Younger would later declare the melons “splendid.” The gang then continued west along the tracks. They scored another small victory when they spotted a chicken coop, which they successfully raided, ringing the necks of three good hens and a small turkey to roast later. After tramping three miles from the Blue Earth River, the outlaws left the railroad siding and walked fifty paces into the woods to the foot of a sharp ridge known locally as Pigeon Hill. They built a good fire, draping their coats and blankets over saplings to keep the bright flames from being spotted from the railroad tracks.

  Cole did not like this camping spot; he thought it was a mistake to be so close to the railroad, but the rest of the boys were hungry and cold, and as far as they knew, no one had seen them slip out of Mankato. Bob Younger removed his sling and bloody shirt and tended to his shattered elbow while some of the men plucked and dressed the birds and placed them on the crackling fire, along with several ears of corn. The woods were perfectly still, and the bluish column of smoke rose through the trees and spread out as a thin haze in the morning sky above the campsite. The man tending to breakfast had just turned the poultry and corn to cook it evenly when the gang suddenly heard the hooting and hollering of excited men that sent each bandit’s heart racing. The commotion was coming from the railroad tracks, and the yelling men were rapidly getting closer.

  Detective Hoy and his squad, along with a small party led by the Winona County sheriff, had gone to the Blue Earth Bridge first thing that morning and were shown the tracks of the outlaws going to and from the melon patch. Encouraged by these fresh signs, Hoy and his men quickened their pace down the tracks. At 6:30 A.M., an engineer on a passing locomotive waved vigorously at Hoy’s party and pointed to Pigeon Hill, just ahead of them. The detective broke into a run, but in his excitement, he rushed past the deep, muddy boot prints where the gang had left the railroad siding. A posseman bri
nging up the rear saw them and yelled ahead to Hoy. The detective raced back to the spot, breathing hard, and caught a strong whiff of burning feathers. Then he saw the film of smoke above the trees.

  “Double quick, charge!” shouted Hoy.

  The manhunters jumped the fence and dove into the woods with a loud crash, Hoy in the lead, his Winchester raised in front of him. As they burst upon the campsite, the bushes just beyond were still moving from where the outlaws had run through them. In their panicked flight, the bandits had left behind their breakfast, still cooking on the fire, as well as coats, blankets, and bridles. Hoy waited for more of the men to catch up, and then they set off again after the fugitives, the pursuers chattering nervously and loudly up and down the line. The outlaws clearly heard Hoy’s orders, and whenever he shouted, “Keep to the left,” the gang moved to the right.

  By midmorning, more than two hundred men crisscrossed the woods around Pigeon Hill and beyond; by that afternoon, hundreds more tromped over several square miles of surrounding countryside. Detective Hoy took time to jot a note for the telegraph, stating that they had “captured” the robbers’ supplies. “We are in hot pursuit,” he wrote. But to those who were part of that pursuit, it was painfully clear that the Minneapolis detective had committed his worst blunder yet. Hoy had been cautioned that morning to “take it cool and lay his plans well before he started.” But Hoy, with typical arrogance, brushed off the advice. Had he and his squad remained calm and quiet—and waited for additional men—a plan could have been put in place to surround the robber camp. But the noise of Hoy’s party and their pell-mell rush into the woods gave the robbers all the warning they needed, with no one on the other side of the ridge to block their retreat.

  “It is safe to say,” wrote one angry volunteer, “that Mr. Hoy’s running so as to be the first to get the glory and reward, was the cause of the robbers’ escape.”

  The outlaws fled southeast from Pigeon Hill, striking the Blue Earth River after about a mile. To foil the manhunters, they had waded in streams, stepped from rock to rock for great distances, walked in each other’s footprints, walked only on their heels, then walked only on their toes. They doubled back on their trail, then doubled again. Upon reaching the Blue Earth, they marched upstream for half an hour until halting in a thicket on the river’s bank. Bob, his pain exacerbated when moving, desperately needed rest, so the gang hunkered down here for the rest of the day.

  Between 3:00 and 4:00 P.M., as the rain poured down, three possemen came near enough to the thicket to hear the robbers’ voices. The manhunters strained their eyes to see the outlaws but failed to detect a human figure—they knew better than to go into the thicket after the fugitives. The three waited for some time but heard nothing more. Growing anxious, they shouted and fired their shotguns into the brush, which brought no response. Finally, with no other manhunters appearing to bolster their numbers, and evening coming on, the three men abandoned their watch and hurried off to report what they had heard.

  The possemen were lucky because the fugitives later said they had caught a glimpse of one of their pursuers. It would have been an easy pistol shot, one of the outlaws commented.

  Never had the James-Younger gang welcomed darkness like they did that night on the Blue Earth River. But their suffering, fatigue, and stress made for hair-trigger tempers, and they got into a heated argument. Jesse and Frank pointed out that they had been dead right about Dunning. The man should have been killed. Now he had put all Minnesota on their trail, and it was critical the outlaws get as many miles behind them as possible before morning. They could not do that with Bob slowing them down. Despite whatever feelings he had for Bob, Jesse believed they had no choice but to leave him behind. Jesse had a wife and a young boy waiting for him, and Frank had a wife at home as well. And if caught, they would all be facing murder charges. That is, if they were not lynched on the spot.

  Cole would never abandon his brother, he angrily told Jesse, nor would Jim. If the James boys wanted to go their own way, they should do it. And so it was decided. Charlie Pitts had a family, too, but his loyalty was to the Youngers, and he chose to link his fate with theirs. Recognizing the hopelessness of their situation, the Youngers and Pitts gave the James brothers their gold watches, rings, and most of their cash to keep for them. The timepieces alone were worth a few hundred dollars, and they thought it was better to part with them now than take a chance of them becoming trophies of the manhunters.

  The Youngers and Pitts most likely gave the James boys verbal messages for loved ones and, on the chance they all made it back to Missouri, agreed upon a place to meet. After short, knowing nods—that they might never see one another again—Jesse and Frank disappeared into the bushes and the cold night.

  SEVEN

  LAST STAND ON THE WATONWAN

  I believe that there were in that country 7,000 lakes, and between every two lakes there was a marsh. . . . We suffered in those fourteen days a hundred deaths.

  —COLE YOUNGER

  Even with the manhunters’ failures, near misses, and infighting, General Pope was still insistent that the Northfield desperadoes were within his reach. Yes, a full week had passed since the raid, but the fugitives had not gotten any more than seventy miles from Northfield. Pope knew some of the robbers were badly wounded—a bloody shirt and handkerchief had been found at the Pigeon Hill camp. These injuries, plus their disadvantage of now being on foot, gave Pope every reason to believe the outlaws weren’t going to get too far very fast.

  Pope decided to relocate his headquarters to the small town of Lake Crystal, on the railroad fourteen miles southwest of Mankato. By the early evening of Thursday, September 14, he had set up a new picket line with hundreds of men that stretched in a twelve-mile semicircle. If a bandit tried to breach that line, or if any of Pope’s men saw one of the outlaws, riders were ready to spread the alarm and direct the posses to the point of the sighting. Now, all Pope could do was wait.

  As another wave of rain set in, ten men on the outskirts of Lake Crystal, not far from the general’s headquarters, were guarding a bridge over a small creek. They kept their collars pulled tight around their necks, and as the hours wore on and the evening became colder and more miserable, nine of the guards had had enough. They scavenged some dry straw nearby, carried it under the trees and bushes, and promptly bedded down for a nap. The nine tried to persuade the one remaining guard, thirty-two-year-old Richard Roberts, to give up and join them, telling him the robbers had already escaped.

  “I was sent out here to guard this section of the road,” Roberts said firmly, “and I am going to do it.”

  One of the men called Roberts a “Sunday school boy” and suggested he say his prayers before going to bed. Roberts told his companion to go to hell.

  Shortly after midnight, as the nine guards snored nearby, Roberts thought he heard the sound of a horse’s hooves in the sand. Peering into the inky blackness, the sound came closer and closer until Roberts made out a moving form, which his blinking eyes soon recognized as a horse with two riders on its back. The riders were Jesse and Frank James on a recently stolen black horse.

  “Halt!” Roberts cried. “Who are you fellows?”

  The James boys instantly laid flat on the horse’s back, and the lead rider said, “Get up,” at the same time raking his spurs against the animal’s flanks. As the Jameses flew past, Roberts raised his weapon and fired. The horse jumped, and its riders tumbled to the ground. Both men quickly sprang up and dashed into a cornfield. The riderless horse spun around and galloped back in the direction from which it had come.

  The nine sleeping men leaped out of their straw beds, confused and scared. Roberts excitedly told them what had just happened, and one of the guards raced for Lake Crystal to deliver the news to General Pope. In a short time, several men returned with lanterns, holding them low to the ground. They carefully examined the scene and found, lying by the side of the road, a fine felt hat, which Roberts immediately claimed. They also discove
red two sets of tracks that resembled the ones they had seen for the last several days. One set had been made by a fine boot with a small, high heel and square toe. There were no signs of blood—at least none were reported at the time. Clearly, though, two of the robbers had broken the line—again.

  At daylight, as Detective Hoy’s squad and others arrived at Lake Crystal, an anxious Baptist minister named Joseph Rockwood came into headquarters and reported that his team of iron-gray mares had been stolen. The horses were taken from a farm three miles to the south at approximately 3:00 A.M. Rockwood had good reason to be upset because his large mares were considered the best team in Blue Earth County.

  Now the Jameses, no longer encumbered by the Youngers, had two strong mounts and could move fast and always be a step ahead of the posses. Over the next two days, several sightings of the pair brought frenzied reactions from the manhunters as they tried to cut off the robbers. But while the reports on the James boys kept the telegraph operators busy, the big mystery was the whereabouts of the other four desperadoes. Had they slipped through Pope’s picket line undetected? Were they still hidden in the woods of Blue Earth County? The bandits seemed to have melted away with the rain, but how?

  The last horses reported stolen in the area were Rockwood’s two mares, which told the pursuers that in all likelihood, the rest of the gang was still on foot. Also, no one who had seen the James brothers described either man as wearing a sling, so the robber with the hurt arm (Bob Younger) must be with the other four. This man was obviously “used up” and was relying on his companions as they attempted to elude the manhunters. Perhaps Jesse and Frank’s separation from the others was intended to divert the posse’s attention away from the rest of the gang and the crippled bandit.

  Then again, some even believed the outlaws had killed the wounded bandit so they could move more quickly. Yet another theory held that the four robbers on foot were being harbored by “lawless scoundrels” in a secluded house somewhere, or that they were being comforted and fed at a secret campsite. “There are those who would not hesitate to do so,” commented the reporter for the Saint Paul Dispatch.