“You’ve got that right, Roy. Yes, sir, you’ve got that right,” Jesse agreed.
“If you two old soldiers want to regale each other with war stories, please do it more quietly,” Barnes said. “I don’t care to listen to exaggerated tales of glory all the way to Matfield.”
“Well then, Mr. Pinch Nose, we’ll keep quiet, just for you,” Jesse said.
They spoke little for the next half hour, then the coach came to an unexpected stop.
“Driver why are you stopping?” Barnes shouted, sticking his head out the window. “I must get to Matfield on time.”
“It won’t make any difference,” Jesse said.
“What do you mean it won’t make any—” Barnes started to say, but he stopped in midsentence when he saw that Jesse was holding a gun on him. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Well, Mr. Pinch Nose, this is a robbery,” Jesse said. “I would appreciate it if you would hand me that package that you’ve been holding on to so tight.”
“I will not!” Barnes said.
“Billy, is the driver sitting on the right side of the box?” Jesse called through the window.
“Yes, he is.”
“Tell him to move over to the left side, will you? I’m about to shoot this banker in here, and he’s such a scrawny little fella that the bullet is likely to go all the way through him. And there’s no need in the driver getting hurt.”
“No, no! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Barnes said. “Here, here, take the money!” He thrust the package over to Jesse.
Jesse smiled, because until that moment, he had only his intuition that there was money in the package.
“Thank you. I’ll be getting out here, and so will you, Roy.”
“Me? Why am I gettin’ out here? I don’t have any money.”
“No, but you’re going to make certain that my partner and I get away.”
“How is that?”
“We’re going to hold you hostage for a while,” Jesse said.
“Damn!” Crawford said. “And here, I thought you was a nice guy.”
“Get out now.”
Crawford climbed down from the coach, with Jesse behind him. Billy was mounted, still holding the pistol he had used to stop the driver of the stagecoach. He was holding the reins to Jesse’s horse.
“Driver,” Jesse called up to the box. “You keep on goin’ all the way to Matfield. If you see anyone along the way, don’t say a word about what happened here. I’m goin’ to hold on to one of your passengers. If anyone comes after us in the next twenty-four hours, we’re going to kill Mr. Crawford here. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir. What about when we get to Matfield? You know that banker’s goin’ to talk.”
“I figure we’ll be far enough away by then, that it won’t matter none,” Jesse said. “Now, get.”
“Hyeah!” the driver shouted to his team, and with the reins slapping against the backs of the horses, they bolted forward. The coach started so quickly it jerked up and down.
“Ha! I hope that jarred the glasses off that little feller,” Jesse said.
“What’s goin’ to happen now?” Crawford asked. “I don’t have a horse. If you two ride off, I sure can’t keep up with you.”
“Wait,” Jesse said, holding up his hand. “Wait till the coach goes around that bend up there so that it’s out of sight.”
“Pa, what was you talkin’ about, holdin’ this man hostage?” Billy asked. “We’re not really goin’ to do that, are we?”
“Nah,” Jesse answered. “Roy, how much money did you say you needed to start that café you’re wantin’ to start?”
“Five hundred dollars,” Crawford replied. “Why?”
Jesse opened the accordion file and looked down inside. “Because you just took out a loan from the bank, and you don’t have to pay it back,” he said. Reaching down inside, he came up with a bound packet of twenty-dollar bills, then counted out twenty-five of them. “Here’s your money.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t very well have given it to you in the coach now, could I? Old Pinch Nose would have seen it, told the sheriff, and you’d have to give it back. This way, they think I took you as hostage.”
“Damn, Mr. Peacock, I don’t know what to say?”
“You just sit here and wait, and someone will be along soon. When they do, you tell them which way we went.”
Crawford smiled. “You mean tell them the opposite of which way you went, don’t you?”
“No, if you do that, they’ll see the tracks and know that you lied. You tell them exactly which way we went. Only, you’d better find some way to hide that money before anyone gets here.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Peacock. Yes, sir. Oh, and Lexy?”
“Yes?”
“I can tell from your accent that you most likely fought for the South durin’ the war, while I fought for the North. But it’s like I said. It sure don’t make no never mind anymore, since we both had to go through the same kind of hell, even if we was seein’ it from different sides. I want to wish you and your boy lots of luck. I don’t want to be readin’ whereas you two got caught.”
“We’ll try not to,” Jesse said, swinging into the saddle.
“Good-bye!” Crawford called as the two galloped away. “Good-bye!”
The cabin on the Brazos—March 17, 1942
“Did Mr. Crawford buy his café?” Faust asked.
“I don’t know, I never came back to check. I’d like to think so, and I’d be willing to bet that he did.”
“How much money was there in that file the banker was carrying? I know there was at least five hundred dollars, because you gave that much to Crawford.”
“There was an even ten thousand dollars,” Jesse said.
“So, you had just over ten thousand when you left New York—”
“Ten thousand apiece,” Jesse interrupted.
“And you added another five thousand. You know, Jesse, in 1905, the average yearly income was about six hundred dollars. That means that you and Billy each had twenty-five years of income there. Did that hold you for a while? Or did you start spending it wildly and living the high life?”
Jesse chuckled. “We spent it wildly, but it didn’t have anything to do with living the high life.”
“I don’t understand. If you spent it wildly, and it had nothing to do with the high life, what did you spend it on?”
“Ostriches.”
“Ostriches?”
“Yeah, ostriches.”
“What in heaven’s name were you doing spending it on ostriches?”
“I’ll tell you that when we come to it,” Jesse said. “You’re getting me a little ahead of the story.”
“I suppose I am,” Faust said. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I’m so taken by the story that I can hardly wait for what comes next. I’ll tell you this, Jesse James, or J. Frank Alexander. If what you are telling me isn’t true, then the world has been denied one hell of a Western novelist, because that yarn you’re spinning is right up there with anything Zane Grey, Owen Wister, Clarence Mulford, or I could possibly come up with.”
“Yeah, well, it’s easy enough for me to tell, ’cause all I have to do is remember what happened,” Jesse said.
“When I interrupted the story, you and Billy were riding away from Roy Crawford, who you left standing along the side of the road. Where did you go?”
“Well, for a few days, we just kept ridin’,” Jesse said. “We stayed off the main roads, and we didn’t go into any of the little towns, just in case old Pinch Nose gave a good enough description that someone might recognize us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Near Matfield Green, Kansas—October 5, 1905
Jesse and Billy rode south from the road where they had stopped the stage, then turned west.
“Are we going to find a railroad?”
“We’ll go on into Colorado and catch a train there,” Jesse said. “I’ve sort of got a hankerin’ to s
ee what has become of Wild Horse. Also, I’d like to visit your ma’s grave.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “Yeah, I think I’d like that, too.”
“We can ride for a while. We don’t have any urgent need to be in California.”
“Pa,” Billy said. “If there’s anybody still in Wild Horse, they’ll know us.”
“Sure they will. They’ll know us as neighbors who used to live there. Billy, I do want you to be careful, and watch what you do and what you say, but you can’t go through the rest of your life being afraid of every shadow. If you do, it just isn’t worth it.”
“All right,” Billy replied.
They rode on in silence for about another hour.
“Pa?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Well, what do you think we ought to do about it?”
Billy laughed. “That was part of my schoolin’, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
An hour later Jesse and Billy were stretched out on blankets near a fire. A rabbit, stretched across a circle of rocks, was browning in the flames.
“I wish we had some salt,” Billy said.
“We do. I never travel without it.”
Billy laughed. “You never taught me that before.”
“I thought that was something you could figure out yourself.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jesse reached over to move one of the rabbit’s legs. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “It’s done.”
It was another week before they reached Wild Horse. By now, even Dunnigan’s Grocery Store was gone, and the structures that remained were boarded up. As they rode down the street the sound of the hoofbeats seemed louder than normal, echoing back from the front of the silent buildings.
“It seems kind of spooky, don’t it, Pa?” Billy asked.
Jesse chuckled. “Maybe that’s why they call them ghost towns.”
The only living creature they saw in the entire town was a coyote who stared at them from between two of the boarded-up buildings.
“There’s where I went to school,” Billy said.
The windows of the schoolhouse had all been broken out, and the front door hung askew on a single hinge.
“Pa, can we look inside?”
“Ha!” Jesse said. “It was all I could do to keep you in school when you were young. Now you want to look inside?”
“Yeah.”
“All right.”
They angled their horses toward the small building, cut across the school yard, then tethered them to the railing that was still intact on the front porch. There was drift dirt on the floor inside, but all the desks, including the teacher’s desk, were still there. The blackboard was there as well, and there was a chalk message faded, but still legible.
The record is not yet written of those who learned here.
Have we produced an artist, a writer, a doctor,
perhaps even a president?
I am a part of each of my students,
and each of them a part of me.
This school is gone, but it shall never be forgotten.
—Pauline Foley, last day of the Wild Horse School,
June 12, 1903
Billy laughed. “Mrs. Foley was always putting little things like that on the blackboard. I wonder where she is now.”
“I’m sure she’s teaching school somewhere,” Jesse said. “Everyone said she was a real good teacher.”
Billy looked around the school, then began pointing out desks, naming who sat at each of them.
“That’s where Ann Woodward sat,” he said. “I sure pined over her, but she never would give me a second look.”
Billy was quiet for a moment, then he turned and started toward the door. “Let’s go, Pa. I don’t want to be in here anymore.”
From the school they rode out to the cemetery and were surprised to see it was remarkably well kept up. There was a sign erected at the edge of the cemetery.
STRANGER, pause here to take a reverent bow:
These graves you peruse in idle curiosity
Are of those who were once as you are now
And as is certain that someday, you will be!
Jesse and Billy walked over to look down at Molly’s grave.
“Pa?”
“Yes?”
“When we was in Missouri, you put that flower on your first wife’s grave. Do you miss Ma as much as you did her?”
“Billy, I was only married to Zee for eight years. I was married to Molly for nineteen years. If you want to know the truth, I miss your ma more than I miss Zee.”
“I’m glad,” Billy said. “I mean, I’m real sorry about your first wife, how it had to be and all. But I’m glad to know how you felt about Ma.”
“Let’s go to California,” Jesse said, turning to leave the cemetery.
“How far is it to California?”
“I don’t know; I’ve never been there. But all my life I’ve heard about how far it is. And how pretty it’s supposed to be.”
“Are we going to ride horses all the way to California?”
“No, we’ll sell our horses and tack in Mirage, then take the train. Only not right away.”
“Why not right away?”
“Damn, boy, you want to get on the train looking and smelling like we do now? They would more’n likely make us ride on the car with the horses. We’ll get us a hotel room in Mirage, spend a few days there, get cleaned up, and maybe buy some new clothes.”
“You know what I want? I want me a hat like the one that was on the head of that little banker feller on the stage.”
Jesse laughed. “Yeah, you’ll look real fine in that hat.”
They reached Mirage late that afternoon, checked in to a hotel, took a hot bath, and spent their first night in a bed for some time.
The next morning, Jesse inquired at the desk about some of his friends.
“Larry Wallace? Oh, yes, he’s still here. He’s a deputy sheriff. I imagine you’ll find him down at the sheriff’s office now; he mostly just stays there and watches over the place.”
Wallace was sitting behind a desk, reading the paper, when Jesse stepped into the office a few minutes later.
“I thought you weren’t going to do law work anymore,” Jesse said.
Wallace looked up at the sound of a familiar voice. “Frank!” he said. “My, oh my. It’s been a coon’s age. How are you doing? What brings you here?”
“Billy and I are on our way to California, so we decided to stop by the cemetery and visit Molly. I was surprised at how well the cemetery is being kept up.”
“Yes, well, half the town of Mirage has folks buried there, so several of them go over there from time to time and work. I’m sure glad you stopped by. You said you and Billy. Where’s young Frank?”
“He got himself married to the prettiest girl in Oklahoma,” Jesse said. “Or at least that’s what he says, and you’d better not argue with him.”
“You know, folks are still talkin’ about what a great job he did, speakin’ those words over Molly’s grave like he done. I’m sure glad you stopped by on your way.”
“What are you doing wearing a badge? I thought you had sworn off that.”
“Well, I guess I just got it in my blood. You know how it is, you sometimes get used to somethin’, and you find that you just can’t walk away from it as easy as you thought.”
“Yes, I know how it is,” Jesse said, thinking of his own return to the outlaw trail.
“Oh, by the way, we’ve got us a stagecoach robber to look out for now.”
“Where? Here in the county?”
“No, it was back in Kansas, but what with automobiles, and trains all over the place, and telephones, robberies aren’t all local anymore. Although these two were ridin’ horses. At least one of ’em was, ’n he brought the horse for the other robber, who had started out as one of the passengers. He stole a money shipment from a bank messenger, then took the other passenger hostage.”
“W
hat happened to the hostage? Was he hurt?”
“No, he managed to escape from them when they weren’t looking. Say, do you remember that time you rode on the posse with us and shot down all four of the bank robbers?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Jesse said. “But I don’t like to dwell on it. Killin’ those four men didn’t sit all that well with me.”
Wallace shook his head. “No, I don’t reckon it did. Killin’ don’t sit well with any decent man. So, you’re going to California, are you? Well, how long are you going to be in town?”
“Not long, maybe a day or two to catch up with some friends. Gene Welch, Glen Dunnigan. Are they doing all right?”
“Yes, both of them are. Dunnigan’s got hisself another store.”
“I’m glad.”
Wallace picked up the phone. “Let me call my wife. I’ll have her round up the Dunnigans and the Welches. You and Billy will come for dinner tonight, won’t you?”
“Sure, we’d be glad to.”
“New York City is absolutely the biggest place you’ve ever seen in your life. I thought Kansas City, Saint Louis, and Chicago were big. But New York is so big I can’t describe it,” Billy said at dinner that evening. “They’ve got trains that run by electricity on tracks that are so high they are halfway up the sides of the buildings. And they’re as fast as greased lightning. And one of ’em we was in ran off the track and fell to the ground below.”
Billy also told about the St. Louis World’s Fair, and all the “wonderments” they had seen.
“I don’t see any need for you folks to go on to California,” Dunnigan said. “We can always use good neighbors right here in Mirage.”
“I appreciate the invitation, Glen,” Jesse replied. “But I’ve always wanted to see California, and you know what they say, I’m not getting any younger.”
“Oh, California is a pretty place, all right,” Dunnigan said. “I’ve been there a few times. But it can’t compare with Colorado.”
“I’ve heard about San Francisco for nearly my whole life,” Jesse said. “That’s where we’re headed.”
Shot in the Back Page 20