Northfield

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Bring him inside,” Donaldson said.

  “Oh, no, we’ll just get him home.”

  Donaldson sprayed the ground with tobacco juice, his black eyes focusing on Jim as he helped Bob take a drink of cool well water.

  “What happened to that fellow’s arm?” he asked.

  “Shot,” Jesse said. “A blackleg shot him after we had this row in Northfield. We killed him.”

  Donaldson switched the chaw from one cheek to the other.

  I pulled myself in the saddle, rubbing my leg, and thanked the farmer for his hospitality. As we eased our horses toward the Old Dodd Road, the farmer called out to our backs: “What was the name of that gambler you killed?”

  “Stiles,” Jesse answered with a grin before spurring his horse into a lope.

  That’s how things went pretty much that first day. We’d stop at a farm here and there to bath our wounds, look at some horses that we might steal, but nothing caught our fancy. We met up with a score of folks, farmers mostly, and they’d suspicion us considerable, but, hell, we told them we were chasing horse thieves or hauling a thief to jail.

  One farmer told us we were taking the wrong road if we were heading for this-and-such town, but Jesse, still in jovial spirits, said: “Oh, no, we’re taking the right road.”

  We wound up relieving one sodbuster of his horse a mile or so out of Millersburg, and Cole took the farmer’s hat to replace the one he’d lost. Later we stole another saddle, kept riding. Long about dusk, the saddle girth snapped and sent Bob sailing into the ditch. The horse run off back toward Millersburg, and Jim and Charlie gave it a chase, but it was no use. Both of them boys had been shot in the shoulder—Jim’s wound looked the worser— and our horses were pretty much played out. Cole knelt over his brother, who wailed in pain, but Cole gave Bob a stick to bite on, tightened the bandage on his busted arm, helped young Bob onto the back of his horse.

  We rode.

  That night, we camped in the woods. Cole took off his undergarments, which we tore into strips and used for bandages. No coffee, not even a camp-fire that night. No interesting debates with Cole. No fiddle playing by Jim. No sermons from Jesse. We licked our wounds.

  I sat beside Cole, thinking maybe we should compare our leg wounds, but figured Cole would find no humor in this at the moment, but Charlie Pitts inquired about the money, and so I emptied my pockets.

  “Where’s that sack you took, Bob?” I asked. “From the till?”

  “It’s on the street,” Bob answered with unusual bitterness when addressing Jesse or me (now his brothers…that was another matter). “Want to go back and fetch it?”

  “Maybe they’ll forward it to us,” Jesse chimed in.

  “Charlie?” I asked.

  Pitts shook his head. “I didn’t get none.”

  “Christ A’mighty,” Cole said, and carved off some chawing tobacco from a twist one of the farmers had given him that afternoon.

  Robbery is an interesting profession. From what all has been printed, a body would think the James and Younger boys lived high on the hog, eating off the best china, sipping Madeira from crystal wine glasses, richer and merrier than Robin Hood. Truth be told, most of the banks we chose were as poor as the rest of Missouri. Lots of time we didn’t get enough for our troubles. Rich? Not hardly. And all that wealth Bill Stiles had promised…?

  As I tossed a two-cent penny onto the pile, I announced: “Twenty-six dollars and forty cents.”

  Jesse laughed. “You can have my share, Bob,” he said, and pulled his dirty duster over him like a sheet, adjusted his hat, and, gripping his Colt, his Schofield and Smith & Wesson close by, went to sleep.

  Things got quiet. Charlie Pitts announced that he’d take first watch, asked Jim to spell him in three hours, and he walked off into the woods and found a spot. Jim started snoring softly, and Bob tossed about in a fitful sleep.

  Cole spit. “What happened in the bank, Buck?”

  I shrugged, packing my leg wound with finely ground gunpowder and tightening the bandanna around it, then stretched out and asked to partake of Cole’s twist.

  When I had the tobacco good and moist and comfortable, I got around to answering Cole’s question. “We were trying to make the cashier open the safe. One of the other bankers took off running out the back door. Charlie give him chase, but he got away, though Charlie said he hit the son-of-a-bitch. Anyway, it was no good from the get-go.”

  “Damn’ right, Buck,” Cole said. “You saw how crowded town was. Never should have gone in the bank in the first place.”

  “‘If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch,’” I said.

  Cole spit. “Guess we all fell in the ditch.”

  “Least we climbed out. For now. All except Stiles and Clell.”

  “What else happened in there?”

  “I killed the cashier. Shot him as I took my leave.” There, I’d said it.

  “God, Buck, God. I told you-all in the woods that there wasn’t to be no killing. Why’d you kill him? Think he was going for a gun?”

  I couldn’t answer that. Still can’t. I don’t have one notion as to why I shot that bastard. Rage? Did I think he was a threat? Just my plain old cussedness? Maybe Cole had the answer.

  “Just how drunk were you?” he asked.

  I spit, turned to face my old friend. “How drunk was you, Bud, when you shot that unarmed fellow out on the street?”

  Cole didn’t have an answer, either, and I felt bad for him, knowing how much he had wanted to avoid killing. So I said: “Maybe you just give him a headache. Doubt if that little Thirty-Two would have killed him. I bet he’ll just have a scar and a story to tell his grandkids.”

  “Maybe,” Cole said hopefully.

  We didn’t say much after that, finished our chaws in silence, tried to catch some sleep in the woods, figuring the next day would be a hell of a time.

  It rained that Friday. A cold, mean, soaking rain that had some blessing, as it cooled off the fever Bob had taken during the night, and it made tracking us a damned sight harder for any posse that might be out sloshing through southern Minnesota. We met the first posse at the Little Cannon. Well, it was more of a picket than a posse, and I had to give the Minnesota laws some credit. They had a bunch of men chasing us, and guarding the fords of the creeks and rivers was a good chess move. Might have worked if even a quarter of the men they had on our trail was worth snuff.

  These three idiots fired at us without so much as a warning. Raining like it was, coming down in sheets at the time, we could have been the Rice County sheriff and Governor Ames himself. They couldn’t shoot worth a damn, either, so we just turned back, waited in the woods. A few minutes later, those three heroes of Minnesota give us chase, only they rode right past us. We waited a couple of minutes, returned to the road, and forded the river without any trouble.

  Word was out by then, all across Minnesota, about the Northfield robbery and murders, and already they laid the blame on the James-Younger Gang. This we learned from a farmer who had heard the news in Janesville.

  “You are ubiquitous,” I told Jesse, a little running joke betwixt us. My brother liked to say that himself, vainglory being one of his foibles.

  “Who else would have the gumption to rob a Yankee bank in Minnesota,” Jesse said, defending himself.

  We rode.

  “Hell, we can’t see shit in this rain,” Charlie Pitts snapped later that day. “We need us a damned guide.”

  Which is how come Jesse borrowed the first kid from the farm. The kid got us past Janesville, where we turned him loose and gave him a dollar from our Northfield plunder for his trouble. At the next farm, we borrowed two more little yellow-haired boys, and they got us to the swamps just shy of Elysian. Those kids we paid a dollar each, too, then wound up borrowing some horses from the next two farms we come across.

  “Hell, Dingus,” Jim said. “We keep kidnapping little kids and stealing horses, rain or no rain, we’ll be leaving a trail any fool can follo
w.”

  “You got a better idea? You know where we are? You know how to get us home, James Younger?”

  “West and southwest,” Cole said, acting the peacekeeper for once. “The posse ain’t gonna be able to follow us worth a damn through these swamps.”

  So we made camp that night in the thickets between Elysian and what one of them tots said was German Lake.

  That’s where we got the notion to leave all of our horses. Jim Younger was right. If we kept stealing horses and borrowing youthful guides, the laws would find us certain sure, but it also came to Jesse that the posse would be chasing six men on horses. One of the horses we had borrowed was a fancy bright gelding. “Yaller horse,” Charlie called it, and it was sure to attract attention. ’Course, we could have simply left that horse, but we figured on making better time afoot in the brambles and sloughs and woods. We’d sneak on past the posses.

  That’s what we done.

  This is the life of an outlaw, worse than being chased by Pinkertons or Redlegs, worse than anything I’d experienced in Missouri during our war for liberty. We made four miles the first day afoot. When the rain stopped, the mosquitoes came out, and Jim’s shoulder wound started festering. I figured Bob—in fever, delirious, breaking sticks in his mouth the pain was so fierce—would wind up losing that arm, or the rot would set in and kill him. After the mosquitoes had damned near sucked us dry, the rains would start again, damned torrents.

  We ate watermelons till we grew sick of them. Green corn that laid some of us low with bowel complaints. I cussed Jesse and his idea to abandon the horses, not so much for not having anything to ride, but I figured I could always cut a sliver off the saddle strings and chew on it like jerky.

  We walked, trudging along through mud, fording sloughs when we had to, soaked to the skin, about to catch our deaths.

  The worst came after Jesse and Charlie snuck up to this farm, and caught us chickens and a turkey and, after wringing their necks, brought us back supper. Fresh meat at last. Charlie even had some lucifers that wasn’t soaked and ruined, and we decided to risk a fire. Cole and I rigged up Bob’s blanket over a tree branch, hoping that would catch most of the smoke and keep the rain off our cook fire. Jim cleaned the turkey while Charlie and Jesse plucked the chickens, and soon we had them birds roasting over our small fire.

  Hell, I was so starved, I could have eaten them all raw.

  Which is what maybe we should have done.

  When you look back, it was a damned poor idea, because, sure enough, somebody either smelled the smoke or seen it or smelled the fowls cooking, ’cause here came some Minnesota sons-of-bitches sloshing through the woods, making more noise than a regiment of Yankee cavalry.

  We had to run, leaving behind those birds, still roasting under the soaked blanket. Painful. What a tragic waste.

  Next day was Wednesday. Almost one week since we’d robbed the damned bank in Northfield, and what did we have to show for it? Starving bellies. Ruined clothes, boots, hats. Two infecting wounds tormenting Jim and Bob, and the rest of us shot up and ailing considerable. Even Jesse had caught a flesh wound back in Northfield, though, Jesse being Jesse, he never let on till I spied it one evening when he was trying to doctor himself with a strip of his own underwear. Almost a week, and, damn it all to hell, we were still in Minnesota. Not even to Mankato.

  “We got to find us a guide,” I finally said.

  “We’ve discussed that,” Cole began. “The risk….”

  “The hell with the risk, Bud!” I was wet, cold, hurting from a bullet that had torn my leg up bad. I missed my mother and my wife, and I just wanted to get out of these damned woods, get out of the rain. Noose or a bullet looked a far sight prettier than rooting in them wilds like some feral hog. “They got a thousand men chasing us, if you believe that farmer Charlie saw the other day when he was scavenging.”

  “But they haven’t caught us,” Cole argued.

  “Yet. They will. Look at that damned tree over yonder, Bud. You see it? You remember it? You should, with that double fork and the deer’s skull at the base. Ain’t likely to be another like that from here to Eden. But that’s the third damned time I’ve seen it.”

  “Lord have mercy,” Jesse said. “We’re going in circles.”

  Thunder rolled. The wind picked up. They all stared at me as I hadn’t finished my stumping.

  “We have to get past Mankato. Then Madelia. I think if we can make it to the Dakotas, we can get out of here alive. But we’re on foot, and Mankato’s a big town, and we sure as hell are lost.”

  “So we borrow another guide?” Jim asked.

  “Damn’ right. Just to get us to the other side of Mankato, maybe near Madelia.”

  “And what happens to us after he tells the law, Buck?” Cole asked.

  “He don’t tell nobody nothing,” I said, “if we bury the son-of-a-bitch.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THOMAS JEFFERSON

  DUNNING

  Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing I done. You tell me that if a man pointed a cannon in your face and said to do as he’d say or he’d kill you, you tell me you’d be brave as Achilles. Tell me you wouldn’t be shaking in your brogans if you got shanghaied by the notorious James-Younger band of murderers.

  I didn’t wet my britches. I didn’t cry or beg— well, not then, not till later—and you’d have done the same, damn it. I didn’t do nothing but do as I was told. Does that make me yellow? I don’t think so. Tell me you’d have done different.

  Hell, I ain’t no gunman. Ain’t no lawman. Ain’t Wild Bill Hickok or some other dime novel hero. I’m a farmer. Don’t even work my own homestead. Just a working man. Field hand. Farm manager. Rich man’s white nigger. What was I supposed to do?

  Name’s Thomas Jefferson Dunning, but I answer to Jeff, and I work for Mr. Henry Shaubut, one of the richest by-God farmers in Le Sueur County. All them Shaubuts in these parts is rich. Mr. Shaubut’s a good man, though, treats me decent, pays me decent, goes to church regular, and I don’t think he’d’ve done no different than I did.

  That morning, Wednesday, September 13th, found me in the field, herding some cows afoot, maybe 6 o’clock or thereabouts, when I spotted six men walking straight toward me. They was all dressed practically in rags, sickly looking, and at first I thought they might be part of the hordes of damned fools chasing the killers who raided Northfield the week previous. Chasing ghosts, if you’d asked me then. By that time, I figured those killers had long escaped Minnesota law, was likely back in Missouri, laughing at our peacekeepers and bounty men. So did Mr. Shaubut. Reckon lots of folks now thought the same as we did. The Jameses and Youngers was long gone, and the posses still out in the Big Woods and such was chasing themselves. Only it come to me that these men coming toward me, if they was part of the pursuers, they wouldn’t likely be walking, limping mostly. By jacks, I think the rewards posted for those killers brought out more fools than a keg of forty-rod whiskey.

  “’Morning,” one of them said with a smile, and he leaned on this cane he had made himself (I could tell). His left hip was wrapped tightly with a dirty strip of cloth, and he’d been bleeding a mite. “We’ve kind of lost our way. Wonder if you might help us?”

  Well, right then I knew those six men was the very same killers half the country wanted, and right then those six men knew what I knew because the one with the beard that wasn’t from a lack of shaving, he drew a wicked revolver, earring back the hammer before it ever left the holster, and stuck it under my nose.

  “To hell with good manners, Bud,” the man said to his friend, then told me: “We need food. Clean clothes. And we need to get the hell out of this damned state. This your farm? Answer me, you son-of-a-bitch! Is this your farm?”

  “I just work here,” I said.

  “Where’s the house?”

  I pointed past the pasture. “Just beyond that tree line.”

  “Anybody home? And don’t lie, you miserable bastard, because, if you lie, we won�
��t just cut your throat before we blow your brains out. We’ll kill everyone in the damned house. Every man. Every woman. Every kid, dog, chicken, and pig.”

  “Nobody. Mister Shaubut went to Mankato for a few days. I’m alone.”

  “You know who we are?”

  “I got a strong notion.”

  “You know where we’re from?”

  “Missouri,” I said, nodding. I’d read about it in the Record.

  “We’re a damned long way from Missouri. But you’re going to help us get there. Savvy?”

  My head signaled yes.

  “We need to get through Mankato. How well do you know this country?”

  “Not well at all___”

  The tall man struck me with the butt of that revolver, and down I went, rolling in the mud, tears streaming down my face. Damn, that hurt, hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

  “Don’t you lie to me!”

  “I ain’t lyin’….”

  He kicked me in the ribs, but I must have known what he planned, because I rolled away from his boot and his toe just glanced my ribs. Only one of the other men stood behind me—ain’t got the foggiest how he got there—and booted me hard in the back, and I gasped and groaned, but before I could even get my lungs to work again, another mean-looking man jerked me up by my hair and back, pinned my arms till I thought they’d bust.

  “How well do you know this country?” I was asked again.

  “I wasn’t…lyin’…I….” I had to catch my breath, though I figured the outlaw would kill me before I had the chance to explain. Somehow, he didn’t shoot me, or slit my throat, just waited. Maybe he believed me.

  “How well?”

  “I just hired out here…late summer. Ain’t even from…this area.”

  “Well, you know it better than we do. Savvy? You know who we are. You know we killed that banker in Northfield?”

  “And the Swede,” I said.

  “What?” This came from the fellow leaning on the cane, the one who had acted polite at first. The Indian-looking man about to break my arms suddenly released me.

  “What?” repeated the one on the cane, the one called Bud.