The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel (28 page)

A
CCORDING TO LATER COURTROOM
confessions, Charley Ford stayed with Jesse James from December 6th to April 3rd, either in St. Joseph or on the road in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska, assessing farmland and small-town banks. The Boder Brothers’ Bank in Troy, Kansas, was considered but when Jesse asked that a hundred-dollar bill be broken down into smaller denominations, as was his custom in bank robberies, Louis Boder got an inkling that something was amiss and lied that their currencies were already locked in the vault for the night. And Charley later recalled that Jesse “liked the way the bank in Forrest City was situated, and said he wanted to take that bank, but I told him I did not want to go into that, as I was sick then.” Robberies were conceived, but never carried out, in Humboldt, Nebraska, Maryville and Oregon, Missouri, Sebitha and Hiawatha, Kansas. And of course Jesse would later contemplate an April 4th assault on the Wells Banking Company in Platte City, but that too would never come to pass.

It was February when Jesse lumbered through snow that was high as hip waders in order to inspect a corn crib and silo near Pawnee City. Charley sat on a mare and smoked a cigarette. The Nebraska cold cut his feet off at the ankles and the wind on his cheek was like thistles, but Jesse was ecstatic. He sat down in the chair of a snowbank and shouted, “I could purchase maybe a dozen long yearlings and breed the heifers at twenty months or fatten them until they’re all twos and threes. I could put the calves to grass as soon as they learnt to chew it. You can wean them on skimmed milk. I’d feed the young ones shelled corn and oats, and I’d give hay to the dry cows; no grain. I’d sorta like to try beets and parsnips in cold weather. Your German scientists swear by it.”

Charley let his mare garden the brown weeds that stemmed above the snowcrust. “Somehow I never seen you as the proud owner of a cattle lot. This is going to take some adjusting on my part.”

Jesse scooped up snow and ate it and swatted his mittens as he arose, rejoicing over his prospects. But when they visited another property the next afternoon, Jesse was so wary he wore three revolvers under his Confederate officer’s long wool coat and knotted a blue scarf over his nose and mouth in order to remain incognito. Charley made conversation with the owner as they walked from room to room and saw the grange and barn and stables, but the man seemed either too inquisitive or too comprehending and Jesse trudged to his horse through the snow, leaving Charley to say goodbye and make apologies.

However, by March 2nd agriculture was on his mind and Jesse wrote, in his gnarled and negligent scrawl, this letter of inquiry to J. D. Calhoun of Lincoln, Nebraska:

Dear Sir:

I have noticed that you have 160 acres for sale in Franklin County, Neb. Please write me at once and let me know the lowest cash price that will buy your land. Give me a full description of the land, etc.

I want to purchase a farm of that size, provided I can find one to suit. I will not buy a farm unless the soil is No. 1.

I will start a trip in about 8 days to northern Kan & south Nebrask, and if the description of your land suits me I will buy it. From the advertisement in the Lincol Journal I suppose your land can be made a good farm for stock and grain.

Please answer at once.

Respectful

Tho Howard.

Then the spell apparently wore off because Calhoun received no acknowledgment of his reply.

Charley and Jesse visited Kansas City once at about this time and there Jesse called on Mattie Collins as Charley supported his weight on a pool cue in a smoky Twelfth Street saloon.

Much later, Mattie admitted to a “great fondness” for Jesse and said they “were in constant communication,” which prompted many rumors about a love affair between them, but it is just as likely Jesse visited her in hope of private intelligence rewarding Mattie with presents for whatever she volunteered. Years afterward, when it no longer mattered, Mattie would claim she couldn’t love another man, that she was married body and soul to Dick Liddil, and she’d further claim that she’d never told even one of Dick’s secrets, so it could be Jesse never received what he really wanted, which may have accounted for his tart gloominess and the sting of his words when he collected Charley at the saloon that night.

He was increasingly irritable and suspicious, and a cantankerous mood could fly over him as quickly as the shadow of a bird. But Jesse was neither close-mouthed nor sulky for long, and over the weeks that he and Charley were on the road, he unscrolled yarns and anecdotes that excited interest in Charley only insofar as they permitted him a corresponding reminiscence.

Jesse revealed that for two months one summer, using the alias of John Franklin, he conducted a singing school for the Unity Baptist Church in Calloway County. He said he once intended to steal a Lutheran minister’s cigar box of coins but learned the German’s salary was a mere two hundred dollars per year and Jesse returned the box, avowing, “I’m not as bad as some people think.”

He chronicled a visit to a chum named Scott Moore at the Las Vegas hot springs in the New Mexico Territory. Moore and his wife, Minnie, ran the Old Adobe Hotel there and served gigantic eight-course Sunday dinners that could beguile the gold right out of your teeth. It was there, in July 1879, that Jesse was introduced to none other than Billy the Kid. Billy was slack-jawed and broad in the sitdown and the corners of his mouth collected white saliva when he talked, but he was otherwise an agreeable, generous boy who gloried in the coincidence that the two scariest men in America both wore left-handed guns. They buried him in leg-irons, Jesse said. His English was lazy, his Spanish exact, and Billy’s last words had been “Quién es?”—Who is it? “He was more sinned against man sinning,” said Jesse.

“Like you,” said Charley Ford.

He told Charley about the uncle for whom he was named, and how Jesse Cole had become overwrought by various illnesses and had therefore resolved to permanently end them. His uncle had walked out to a summer lawn, removed his coat and vest and rested a silver watch on them, and then grandiosely lay down, unbuttoned his shirt, and shot himself in the heart.

Jesse swiveled a little in his saddle to see Charley plodding his mare along to the right. “You ever consider suicide?”

“Can’t say I have. There was always something else I wanted to do. Or my predicaments changed or I saw hardships from a different slant; you know all what can happen. It never seemed respectable.”

“I’ll tell you one thing that’s certain: you won’t fight dying once you’ve peeked over to the other side; you’ll no more want to go back to your body than you’d want to spoon up your own puke.”

It was March then and the weather was nasty and the road was ice and muck and scrambled wagon ruts. Their saddles creaked with every movement and their two horses were morose: their nostrils were frosted and their manes were braided with icicles and if they rested the animals their coats would steam in the cold. Charley’s motor worked in the considerable silence between the two men and then he said, “Since we’re looking to robbing banks, I was wondering if I could go so far as to recommend we add another feller to the gang and sort of see if we couldn’t come out of our next job alive.”

Jesse seemed transfixed by his saddle’s left fender and stirrup, and would not raise his stare.

Charley went on, “Bob wanted to know at Christmas could he ride with us next time we took on a savings bank or a railroad.”

Jesse sneezed and then sneezed again and he scoured his nose with his yellow glove, examining the dark streak on the leather.

Charley said, “Bob isn’t much more than a boy to most appearances, but there’s about two tons of sand in him and he’ll stand with his shooter when that’s what’s called for. And he’s smart too—he’s about as intricate as they come.”

“You’re forgetting that I’ve already met the kid.”

“He surely thinks highly of you.”

“All America thinks highly of me.”

“Still. It’s not like you’ve got two million names you can snatch out of a sock whenever you need a third man. I mean, who else is there that isn’t already in jail?”

Jesse sighed and said, “You’re going to try and wear me down on this, aren’t you.”

Charley smiled. “That was my main intention,” he said, and went on to cite his brother’s constancy and his acquaintance with the Jameses, his many attainments and capabilities, his unqualified allegiance and courage, and eventually Jesse said Bob could come along as soon as they’d settled on a situation and a gratifying corporation to rob.

And with that he lost his audience. Charley looked to his left and saw that Jesse had peeled off and was maneuvering through clusters of hickories and hackberries, so that pickets of him appeared vividly against the snow, then vanished into gray air and deep brown trees where branches snapped sharply and shrieked off his coat. Charley wasn’t sure if it was Jesse he was pursuing or if he himself were not being pursued. Then he caught a fuller glimpse and nudged his horse to catch up and after some time he reached Jesse at a creek that was arrested in amber ice and partially covered by snow.

Jesse leaned in his saddle, his arms crossed on the pommel, and considered the small, three-dashed tracks that arrowed across the snow. He winked and said, “I see our supper.”

“Rabbits,” said Charley Ford.

A NOTE WAS MAILED
to Bob Ford with the news that Charley and Jesse would come to Ray County within the next few weeks. Martha collected the letter at the post office and sent word of it to Commissioner Craig in Kansas City because, as a precaution against any slip-up or vendetta, Craig had moved Bob to a room over the National Bank on the corner of Fifth and Delaware streets, and had moved Dick Liddil to Sheriff Timberlake’s house in Liberty, Missouri.

Bob Ford would later be cross-examined repeatedly about Craig’s instructions to him and he never swerved in his recollection: that the commissioner enjoined him to return to Elias’s small cottage in Richmond to await the arrival of the two, that Bob was told to communicate their whereabouts to Sheriff Timberlake via William Ford, Bob’s uncle, or his brother Elias (who was a secretly sworn deputy then, on the lookout for Jim Cummins or Frank James), and furthermore if Craig did not receive word from Bob within ten days after Martha reported him gone, the government would consider the Ford brothers already slain and would move against Jesse without regard for their safety.

Craig said all that in a stoic, lawyerly, teacherly way, as if making simple calculations or performing a regular task that was then no more than routine. Bob accepted the counsel as an ignorant boy would, nodding general agreement at every phrase, veering his eyes toward a noise in the street, anticipating the conclusion to each sentence without fully appreciating the contents. Then he left Kansas City and spent two or three weeks with Elias in Richmond, where he showed uncommon industry by clerking in the grocery store.

Sheriff Timberlake prowled the store once, priced a tin of tooth-powder, and then slipped into the storeroom and made a cigarette, smoking patiently until Bob could join him.

When he could get away from the grocery buyers, Bob said, “Haven’t seen any sign of him.”

“Do you know where he’s living?”

“No.”

The sheriff sighed and gazed at a box containing Baker’s Breakfast Cocoa. “I can’t guess how he does it, but he’s always knowledgeable about what’s going on. He’ll know you’ve been with me. You ought to take that for granted. And he’ll kill you if he gets the chance.”

Bob scratched at his neck and slid his eyes away.

The sheriff asked, “You willing to risk that?”

Bob jiggled his head in agreement and then said, “Yes, I am.” He fastened his eyes on Timberlake and it was as if a shade had been drawn over the boy’s face: gone were Bob’s ingratiation and ingenuousness; all the sheriff could see was longing and misery. Bob said, “I’ve been a nobody all my life. I was the baby; I was the one people picked on, the one they made promises to that they never kept. And ever since I can recall it, Jesse James has been big as a tree. I’m prepared for this, Jim. And I’m going to accomplish it. I know I won’t get but this one opportunity and you can bet your life I’m not going to spoil it.”

Sheriff Timberlake winced from cigarette smoke and edged away. “Capture him if you can when he first comes to meet you. If you can’t do it, wait for your chance. Don’t allow yourself to be found alone with him if you can avoid it. And don’t let him get behind you.” The sheriff then ground out his cigarette and exited through the loading door.

Bob remained standing there and then kicked a cardboard box many times and fell down to his knees.

Meanwhile Jesse and Charley meandered, riding eighty miles per day for weeks at a time. On March 8th a newspaper reported that Jesse James was “shot full of holes” in a skirmish at a log cabin in Kansas. The man with him was said to be Ed Miller. Seven deputies were killed, the writer claimed, “in the enterprise of capturing the desperado.” The notice was recanted within the day, but not before one-eyed George Shepherd took exception to it. He immediately wrote a letter to the newspaper in which he jeered at every official pronouncement about the gang and every incompetent posse that went out after them, concluding, “I am of the opinion that there are hundreds of officers and detectives today hunting for the James boys and praying to God not to find them.”

A man who was retired from the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad maintained that he saw Jesse and another man in Lincoln, Nebraska, around this time, but a mill worker claimed they bought flour from him in Memphis, and there were occasional other reports of Jesse’s being sighted in Texas, Colorado, and the South; but he was actually spending the greater portion of his time in St. Joseph: Zee was pregnant once again and he sought to spare her the drudge work of keeping the cottage.

On March 17th, Jesse curried a stallion named Stonewall, braided green ribbons into its mane and tail, and rode magisterially in the St. Patrick’s Day parade with St. Joseph’s many cattlemen. He raised a broad white hat to the ladies, he cast rock candies to the children, he carried on like an army general or someone running for election, and yet no sheriff or Pinkerton operative recognized the outlaw, which may have been a disappointment to him.