The rifle bullet tore off my hat, sending that worthless farm horse into a buck that spilled Frank and me into the soaking ground. By the time we scrambled to our feet, the horse had bolted down the road, and we hightailed it into the woods, Frank limping so bad now that I had to all but drag him.
Yet we did not stay afoot for long, because soon God showed us the light, the light of a cabin, and by the cabin stood a barn, and inside the barn we found a fine pair of grays. No saddles, but Maw had us riding bareback before we were out of diapers.
Onward we traveled. I bought a hat off a buck nigger along the Des Moines River—hated to wear a hat that had been on a damned darky’s head, but, hell, it was still raining. Hated to give money to some darky, but the boy was bound for church, and I figured the dollar would serve as my tithing.
When we wore out the grays, Frank stole a pair of black horses, and, as we made our way nearer the Dakotas, I had a good laugh at my brother’s judgment of horseflesh.
“You look well suited, Frank,” I told him.
“I love a black horse,” he said.
“As do I. You know your horse is blind in one eye.”
“Lucky is all.”
“How so?”
“Yours is blind in both.”
Thus Frank had the last laugh, as older brothers tend to get. One horse blinded in one eye, another blinded in both. How well the James boys traveled!
On Monday morning, we stole yet another pair of grays—Minnesota farmers must sure love gray horses, but for an old Confederate, they suited me—and sometime that day, we crossed into the Dakota Territory. God sent us a sign, I believe, for the sun burst through the gray clouds, which soon cleared, and bathed us in refreshing sunlight, drying our ruined clothes.
We rode to a farm around noon, and asked the farmer if we might partake of his well.
“Help yourself,” the man said.
“Where are we?” I asked. “We seem to have lost our bearings.”
“Valley Springs is the closest settlement.”
Before I could drink, my horse nudged me out of the way and slaked his own thirst from the bucket I had drawn. I let him finish, as he had a long way to travel before we could find some fresh mounts. As I reached for the bucket, still holding enough water for a man, the farmer cried out: “Hear! Hear! Let me get you a fresh bucket, mister.”
The bitterness hit me hard then, as I thought of that treacherous Bill Stiles, a man I had befriended, a man who had the gall to get himself killed, leaving us lost and stranded in Yankee country. I thought of those bastards in the bank, who refused to open the safe, and the men in town shooting at us from all sides, boys hurtling sticks, stones, and insults in our directions. I thought of all the Yankee sons-of-bitches who had slandered, shamed, or slaughtered my family And I thought of this cock-of-the-walk farmer in the middle of nowhere, looking at me as if I were trash.
“I’d rather drink out of a pail used by a horse than by some men I know,” I said, and let the cool water slide down my throat.
Safety is fleeting, as is good fortune, and, before the day had passed, we came across more posses. By then, word had spread that the James brothers, or some of the Northfield bandits, had escaped into Dakota. For a couple of days we hid in a cave, resting, but hunger drives a man. So does the thought of home, of a wife and mother and a year-old son.
We left the cave, slowly rode south.
Dakota is a miserable expanse of bad grass and treacherous ravines and rocks, of which we stumbled over many, and Indians, of which we saw none.
“Country can swallow up a man,” Frank said.
“Yes,” I agreed.
We had entered a badlands of pink and red cliffs and spires climbing perhaps fifty feet high as we entered a stream aptly named, as we had learned from a farmer upon asking directions, the Palisades.
“I think it’s best if we split up,” Frank said.
Again, I agreed with my brother.
He rode left, and I turned right, and for the longest time, after Frank had been swallowed up, I heard nothing but the hard clops of my gray’s hoofs on the rugged ground. The sound almost lulled me to sleep, and I dreamed of a twist of tobacco to chew. I glanced at the blue water rushing fifty feet beneath me, cutting a wide gap that separated me and my brother, somewhere on the opposite side. Some might call this beautiful, but I longed for Clay County.
Clop. Clop. Clop.
Heavy grew my eyelids.
Clop. Clop. Clop.
Soon, I slumbered in the saddle.
The gunshot woke me, or perhaps some instinct took over, and my eyes flew open a mere second before the rifle roared. I whirled in the saddle, drawing the Colt, preferring it in the saddle over the Schofield and Smith & Wesson. Giving the gray plenty of rein, I spurred the gelding ruthlessly.
Quickly I counted a dozen men behind me, saw the puff of a rifle shot, heard one of the men yelling at me, calling out to surrender, that I had nowhere to go.
Except hell.
I kept the gray running close to the canon’s edge, estimating the depth now to the river at perhaps 100 feet, yet the width between the canon’s high, hard walls lessened. Although tired, the horse underneath me was not blind, not lame, perhaps as grand a mount as any we had liberated in Minnesota, so I wheeled around and charged the posse coming straight at me, twice firing the Colt.
That caused those Yankee cowards to reconsider. Two reined up. Another galloped in retreat.
Just as quickly as I had begun my charge, I sent off another round, reined the gray around, and galloped for the canon. Behind me came the report of a rifle, then another, followed by a lawman’s stupid shout: “Stop, you damned fool! You’ll be killed!”
One way or the other, I thought. I pitched the Colt to the ground. Every bit of weight would count. The darky’s hat sailed off my head as the gray found its feet, leaped, soared. The wind battered my face, my heart pounded against my ribs, the gelding snorted as if summoning some extra effort, and the far red wall neared.
One way or the other, those sons-of-bitches chasing me would remember this moment forever, would remember Jesse James.
Forever.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A.O. SORBEL
Boy howdy, you never seen such a commotion as what grabbed hold of Minnesota—folks riding here and there, to and fro, searching barns, guarding bridges and crossroads, chasing each other most of the time, it seemed to me. I even heard tell that some Dutchy congregation around Millers-burg had gathered at some farm, scared out of their wits, and fired the one shotgun amongst them on the hour to frighten away those border ruffians. Outlaws was on the lips of every man, woman, and child. There was a right heap of a reward put up for the capture of the raiders who had robbed the bank and killed two people in Northfield. The newspapers and preachers all said the culprits was Jesse and Frank James and Cole Younger and his brothers.
About two weeks had passed, and things still hadn’t settled down.
Some of our cows wandered off, wandering being in their nature, especially after all that rain we’d had. I had to go round them up and herd them back home, and, when I come over the bridge on the Madelia road, I spotted two men hiding in the woods.
“What are you fellows doin’ yonder?” I called out, because Ma says I’m as curious as a cat, while Pa says I can be as forgetful as a turkey. Guess I was both on that day, because it never occurred to me that those two fellows could have been outlaws.
“Go on with your cows, son,” one of the men said.
“Well, what are you doin’ there? It’s a poor place for huntin’.”
“Depends on the game, perhaps,” said one of them, and he stuck his head up so I could better see him. He carried a big rifle, and I spied a little pistol shoved in his waistband. He had a big, black mustache and a bowler hat, dressed in store-bought duds, too nice to be hunting and hiding in the wet woods. “Do you know who I am?”
My head bobbed. “I think I’ve seen you in Madelia a time or two.�
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“I am Colonel Thomas Vought, son,” he said. “I own the Flanders Hotel. Now, be gone.”
“Not till you tell me why you’re hidin’ in them woods. For all I know you might plan on robbin’ some traveler.”
“Quite the opposite. We hope to bag some robbers.”
The colonel—wonder if he was a real colonel— went on to say that a while back, before the big shooting match in Northfield, two men had visited his hotel. He’d thought nothing of it until after the bank robbery, then when he read descriptions of the men who had escaped, he began to wonder about those visitors. They’d said they had been looking for farms to purchase, but no farmers had since been approached, and those strangers had been quite inquisitive about the lay of the land, especially around here.
“If those two men were a party to that crime,” Colonel Vought said, “I think they might be headed this way”
“Fits,” said the other fellow, who hadn’t given his name or gotten up so I could get a good look at him. “They were last seen crossing the Blue Earth River at Mankato and, perhaps, at the Lake Crystal bridge.”
Said the colonel: “So, that is our purpose. Now move your cows along, son, so you do not reveal our hiding place or agenda to those desperadoes.”
“Outlaws!” Now this really excited me. “Gee! I’d love to take a shot at those fellows with Dad’s old gun.”
The colonel grinned before sinking back behind the brush, and I hurried away to catch up with my cows, but he called out after me, and I turned around.
“Keep your eyes and ears open, son,” he said.
I sure planned on doing that.
I had turned seventeen that March, all of those years spent in Brown County, most of ’em on Pa’s farm near Lake Linden. All those years, nothing like this had ever happened. Oh, sure, the war came, but that had been fought down South, when I was just a kid, and the Santee Sioux rose up in Minnesota during that time—they hanged a slew of them in Mankato—but I couldn’t remember a thing about that.
Outlaws, and not just outlaws and murderers and bank robbers, but, boy howdy, Jesse James and his gang. Now that was something. To me, anyway. When I told Pa about the men I’d spied in the woods, about what they had planned and how they had warned me, he just let out a grunt and reminded me of the chores to be done. Ma, she didn’t have any interest in Jesse James or Colonel Vought, either. Pa and Ma hailed from Norway, came to Minnesota to farm. Nothing interested them much, excepting the weather and the cows and the corn.
Next day, I got up before the sun rose, pulled on my britches, boots, and homespun shirt, and walked outside to start my day. I found the cows in the road, but that’s where they were supposed to be. For the past two weeks it had done nothing but rain, and the mud in the pens would have sucked down all the cows, and me, too, into the bowels of the earth had we left them there.
Pa had woke me up, as was his nature, and he stood by the gate, considering the cows while tamping tobacco down in his pipe, marveling at what a sight it was to behold, seeing that sun and nary a cloud in the sky, and finally stuck his pipe, unlit, in his shirt pocket, picked up the pail, and went to milking Henrietta.
As I walked toward him, two men came down the road, and I stopped, startled, then resumed, never taking my eyes off them fellows.
“Good morning,” one of them said, and, remembering Colonel Vought’s instructions, I hurried to the gate, and looked the two men over. Just two. I’d heard there was something like forty men who had robbed the Northfield bank. They stood on either side of Pa, the cow between them.
Well, those fellows didn’t look like forty men, and sure didn’t look like robbers. Looked like nothing, if you were to ask me, but the most miserable varmints that ever walked on two legs. Both stood fairly tall, one with a thick mustache and several days of stubble over the rest of his face, along with an under-lip beard, the kind Ma despised on a man. The other was much slimmer, almost pale, with big ears, shorter hair and several days’ growth of beard, lighter hair, down his cheeks and chin, though not much for a mustache. Maybe he couldn’t grow a mustache. I couldn’t, and I’d been trying for five years.
“Good morning,” Pa answered, looking up, still milking. “I’d say a great morning. Looks to be a fine day in the making.”
“Appears like,” said the slimmer one.
He kept petting Henrietta’s back, but, while he addressed Pa, he was looking at me, though only briefly. He took in our house, the road, the barn, and pens, wet his lips, and winced. His eyes were blue, also sickly looking, and he walked away, calling at us to have a nice day, gently rubbing his shoulder, followed by the bigger, darker man. Man alive, their clothes were ruined, nothing more than rags, and with me being downwind of those two, they both stank to high heaven. Suspicious, I watched them go, but they kept walking, disappeared around the bend, and I told Pa: “That was the robbers.”
“No,” Pa said as he rose, his knees popping. “They was nice men. Said ‘good morning’ and all. Nice men.”
Well, good manners didn’t convince me of anything, so I dodged the cows and walked till I found some good footprints those strangers had left in the muddy road. “I’ll show you how nice the men was,” I said, squatting by the tracks.
Now, the Army isn’t going to come knocking at my door and asking me to join up as a civilian scout and go after those Sioux and Cheyennes causing a stir in Montana, but I know a thing or two about reading sign. You spend a healthy portion of your years chasing heifers that had wandered all over the tarnal county you’ll learn to track some, too. Those men’s boots had been so worn, I pressed my fingers slightly on toe prints in the mud.
“Come here, Pa,” I said, loud enough for him to hear but not so loud as those two men might.
“Never mind that,” Pa told me. “Come finish the milking. I’ll see about breakfast.”
I let out a little sigh of disgust, not loud enough so that Pa would hear, and walked back to Henrietta and got to choring. The milk sprayed in the pail, and I tried to concentrate, but, well, it got hard because my excitement kept building, and so did the notion that those worn-out skeletons were outlaws on the run.
Henrietta ridded herself of gas, and that just about made up my mind for me. I glanced over my shoulder, couldn’t see Pa, set the milk pail on the other side of the gate, and went following the tracks the two strangers had left. It was just my luck, though, that Pa came outside and spotted me before I had reached the turn.
“Asle Oscar Sorbel!” he called out, but I hurried my steps. “If they is outlaws, boy, they’ll shoot you!”
I didn’t turn back, couldn’t. I just had to learn for myself. My figuring was that I was too old and too big for Pa to hide any more, and I’d milked the cow, could go without breakfast, and catch up on my chores when I got back home.
If the outlaws don’t shoot me, that is.
About eighty rods up the road, after the curve, they had cut into the timber, and then I told myself…they got to be outlaws! I didn’t see them, but I could tell from the tracks that they had crossed the creek. This being Mads Ouren’s property, I paid him a visit, but he hadn’t seen a thing, and I couldn’t find any tracks. Next I went over to Gutterson Grove’s place, and Mrs. Grove let me climb up on her roof to get a good look-see, but I didn’t glimpse a thing there, either. It looked like those outlaws had vanished, if they were outlaws. I ran up the hill, a mighty good perch to keep an eye on the Madelia, Lockstock, and New Ulm roads, only to find those roads empty as my heart.
My convincement had started to fade a mite.
So I went home.
Pa was in the barn, and now I had worked up an appetite and started regretting that perhaps I had missed a chance at breakfast—Ma being a real fine cook—so I went inside, pulled off my boots, and called out to my mother.
“We didn’t know where you took off to, A.O.,” she said.
“Can I eat?” I asked.
“You’re lucky.” Her head tilted toward a platter of eggs and bac
on. “Some hunters passed by while you were gone, asked if they could buy breakfast, but it wasn’t ready yet, and they said they couldn’t wait, so I just gave them yesterday’s bread and a bit of butter. Next time you’ll….”
“What hunters?” My convincement had returned.
“Two strangers,” she said.
“Same fellows who come here earlier?”
Pa had just walked inside, and he answered: “No, two other men. One man on a cane. The other had his right arm hanging in a bandanna sling. I doesn’t think they was hunters.”
“The robbers!” I no longer felt so hungry.
“I suspect you’re right, Son,” Pa said, and it felt mighty good to see him come around to my way of thinking. “They walked down the road, same way those other two men had gone.”
“I’d best go tell Mister Ouren and the others. Tell ’em there are four outlaws, not just two.”
Pa shook his head. “No, A.O. They’ll kill you if they’re them men from Northfield.”
“Well, we got to warn ’em, Pa!”
Ma agreed, and we sent my sister, figuring the outlaws wouldn’t suspect her, and even if they did, they weren’t likely to harm a girl.
“Can I take the horse, Pa?” I begged. “Ride to town. Give the warnin’ that the outlaws is around?”
“No. You might be hurt.”
“Pa! These are outlaws. The men who killed them two fellows in Northfield.”
“And we won’t have them killing you, Son,” Ma said.
“But, Ma, Pa, we got to give the warnin’. There’s a reward out for those men, and we got to let that colonel and the others in Madelia know.”
Pa found his pipe, tapped it nervously on the kitchen table, and at last he nodded. “But,” he said as I leaped toward the door, “you take the east road, so them fellows won’t see you. And you ride to Madelia, tell the sheriff, then you stay put!”
I was halfway out the door before he finished.
Pa had hitched the horses to the wagon, but I took off the harness, tossed a blanket over Nutmeg’s back—we didn’t have a saddle—fixed a hack-amore up, and leaped aboard, riding through our muddy fields and down the little game trail to the woods, then took off down the little woods road, keeping the timber between me and the main road. It was seven miles to Madelia, and I held Nutmeg at a good lope.
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