The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel (4 page)

The man with the cigarette glanced over and inched his shotgun at the porter. He said, “Better get back inside, you black devil, or you’ll have your head blowed off.”

That would have been Ed Miller, who was only a few months away from having his own skull shot in;

THE CONDUCTOR
was named Joel Hazelbaker. He was a severe man who had for ten years worked on freight trains and broke most of the bones in his fists boxing hobos. When the locomotive braked he swung down to the roadbed to determine what the cause was and witnessed the gang swooping down into the cut. He told the crowd in the second-class coach about the robbery in progress and then had the presence of mind to trot around the bend toward the caboose to solicit a flag man. They’d overtaken a freight earlier and he was afraid it would crash into them (a common accident then) unless warned: the back cars would accordion, the freight’s boiler would explode. Near the first-class palace cars, Hazelbaker encountered a raincoated man with two revolvers who was crouched like a nickel book gunfighter and who ordered him to halt but listened when Hazelbaker explained that he had to stop the freight train. A brakeman named Frank Burton tottered over the smoker roof and climbed down with a red lantern, and the two hurried back to the caboose but were shot at with so many rounds that Hazelbaker was momentarily convinced the outlaws commanded an R. J. Gatling cluster gun. He saw Frank Burton’s coat flapping with near-misses as the boy ran on and then the shooting sputtered as Frank James walked the roadbed irritably waving his arms overhead, calling in a big voice, “Cease firing!” over and over again. Frank James simmered, searched out an oaf to hit, found his cousin Clarence Hite, and cuffed him on the ear. He then gave the conductor permission to proceed.

Hazelbaker would later recall for newspaper reporters that he and Burton needed to run less than ten rods beyond the caboose before the freight locomotive announced itself with many long whistles, the engineer having guessed at a problem ahead because of occasional boiler sparks he’d seen swirling through the crowns of trees. The brakeman motioned the lantern across the rails, as Jesse had, and when the locomotive’s brakes screeched into lock on the tires, the conductor returned to the rear of the sleeper, unhooking his nickel-plated watch and chain from his vest and unsnapping a leather wallet that was big as a summons envelope and attached to his suspenders with a shoelace. He separated his seventy-five dollars from that evening’s railroad collections and released his cash and time-piece into an iron water tank that was lashed next to the Pullman door. The watch made a gone-forever noise in the water and Hazelbaker’s stomach queered.

ON THAT TRAIN
the express and baggage and mail cars had been combined into one green, windowless coach with government property divided from the rest by means of a wooden partition and screen. The mail agent was O. P. Melloe. After the locomotive stopped, he opened the door on the north and sagged on the doorframe to observe the gang’s business with the engineer. He also saw that in the rear section of the car the baggagemaster and express messenger had tilted their heads out the open door at radically different heights. The baggage-master said, “Opie? We’re going to bolt this door from the inside.”

“I’d say that’s a good idea,” said Melloe.

Their door slammed and through the chicken wire above the partition the mail agent heard the two young men shuffle bags and boxes. He ascended canvas bags of mail until he could see the two stacking chicken coops, thereby forbidding detection underneath of the Adams Express Company safe that was also en route to Kansas City. Melloe said, “If they push you to the brink, do what you must to save your skin.”

Henry Fox, the messenger, banged down a crate of plumbing fixtures and glanced around for other valuables to camouflage. Fox answered, “Thanks for the reminder, Opie.”

Melloe descended from the crushed mail sacks and leaned against the doorframe with his door opened just enough to see out. A man in a Confederate officer’s coat and blue bandana mask had limped down to the express section with the young fireman in tow by his shirt collar, and a wiry boy in a stovepipe hat and overlarge coat was menacing Foote in the direction of the express car.

Upon arrival at the express section, Chappy Foote ineffectually tried the doorknob and then invited recommendations about what he should do since the express company’s door gave every indication that it was locked and could not be forced. Jesse recocked his revolver hammer (the clicks like a barber cracking his knuckles) and recommended, “Why don’t you smash it in.” He then maneuvered over to Bob Ford as Foote grunted the coal pick into an underhand swing and rounded it overhead into the door near the latch, loudly splintering the wood and embedding the spike so that he had to waggle the handle to extricate it. Jesse confided to Bob, “The locked doors and the smashing them down, that’s a little skit we run through each time—sort of like grace before dinner.”

The engineer oofed and drove the coal pick again and the wood submitted to the blow, screaming and folding inward near the edge. The messenger saw they’d get in anyway, so he pulled the bottom and overhead bolts free inside, saying, “All right! You can come in now!” and Jesse moved forward to sock the kickboard so that the door gave in, quivering into darkness. Henry Fox retreated with his hands high as the baggagemaster snuffed the lights. Jesse ordered the engineer to roost in the weeds with his stoker and ordered Bob Ford to guard them. Bob poked his revolver into Foote’s side and the two railroadmen walked rather routinely off the cinder bed and sat down. Jesse heaved his chest onto the threshold of the express car and kneed himself into the room. Dick Liddil and the come-lately Charley Ford imitated Jesse and lighted a lantern as Jesse lifted packages and shook them and guessed at their contents. “That’s a woman’s satchel,” he said. “All fancy bead work and paper flowers.”

“Could be,” said the baggageman. His smile didn’t know whether to hold on or vanish.

Jesse smashed another box on a nail and snagged it open, finding inside a photograph of a child in an oval frame, the cheek torn by the nail. Jesse flung it against the ceiling, adjusted his blue bandana over his nose, and glared at the express manager. “I want you to open that safe.”

Fox looked to the baggagemaster for counsel. The man’s head was down. Fox looked back at the robber with a nervous smile, his fright making him seem complaisant and insolent. Charley Ford stepped over and struck Henry Fox over the skull with his pistol, the concussion like gloved hands clapping loudly once, like a red apple pitched at a tree. The blow chopped the messenger down to his knees with blood shoelacing his face and the baggagemaster backed to the green wall with horror as Liddil said, “You didn’t have to bop him, Charley.”

“Yes, he did,” said Jesse. “They need the convincing. They got their company rules and I got my mean streak and that’s how we get things done.” Charley grinned with accomplishment and Jesse cleared some registers off the only safe he could see, one no larger than the kneehole in a lady’s dresser. “Come over here and attend to this now.”

Melloe was at the partition. He exclaimed, “You all right over there?”

Dick Liddil heard a wild and scrambled fusillade and leaned outside to see the Crackers firing at a conductor and brakeman who were crouching with a red lantern. Frank James was hollering for them to cease, and after twenty rounds they did. Bob Ford was squatting in the weeds, his gun cocked up next to his cheek. “Scare ya?” Dick called, and Bob stood with no little chagrin. “I couldn’t tell what on earth was going on!”

Fox gathered himself and dialed numbers on the U.S. Express Company vault and after two failures had the combination correct enough to jerk the door open. Then the baggagemaster helped him over the chicken coops, on which he sat down heavily, cracking two frames. The baggagemaster carefully backed onto the coop that covered the Adams Express Company safe, where the greater amount of money was.

It was Charley Ford who emptied the U.S. Express Company safe, with such concentration and sedulousness that he stole receipts, waybills, non-negotiable notes, and a calendar schedule of express deliveries, in addition to more than six thousand dollars in mixed currencies. Jesse then tested the weight of the grain sack and slunk over to the lantern, puzzling over the contents. “Isn’t no hundred thousand dollars here, Dick.”

Dick looked into the grain sack himself and said, “I’m
real
disappointed.”

Bob Ford was standing over the engineer and stoker when Jesse jumped down to the cinder bed from the express car and encouraged the messenger and baggagemaster outside with his gun. Blood had trickled into Henry Fox’s right eye, so he looked at Bob with his left as he staggered over the weeds and crashed down.

Bob gaped at the injury with some panic; Fox admitted to the railroad crewmen that he had a gruesome headache; Jesse was walking with Charley and Dick as he called that they were going to go through the cars. “If any of them so much as twitch, give their coconuts a sockdolager: that’s language they understand.”

BY THAT TIME
Frank James had ascended the stairs at the rear of the ladies’ coach, catching himself with the brass door pull as an ache branched over his chest. Ed Miller and Clarence Hite climbed after him and Ed Miller entered the coach first, his boot slamming the door aside, an eyeholed flour sack over his head, his sawed-down twelve-gauge straight ahead of his right pocket. He was reported to have said, “Throw up your hands, you sons-a-bitches!” and then, for emphasis, slapped a man in the mouth.

Then Frank James strolled inside in his gray coat and yellow bandana mask, looking colossal and mean and sick. He saw about thirty men either cowering or flinching or accusing him with censorious eyes, while the wives scrunched down behind their husbands’ shoulders. He hypothesized at least twenty handguns among the travelers, so he strode down the aisle, imperious as Victoria’s consort, his boot-heels barking on the oakwood flooring, and he scowled and lingered over those investors and vacationers who seemed recalcitrant, ticking a button or collar with his Remington .44 Frontier revolver, which he would surrender to Governor Crittenden in little more than a year.

Frank shouted, “Are any of you preachers?”

No one raised a hand.

He shouted, “Are any of you widows?”

Some frowned with curiosity.

He said, “We never rob preachers or widows.”

Four hands shot up.

“No; no, you’re too late.”

Having satisfied himself that he had conquered any thoughts of rebellion, Frank nodded to the rear of the coach and an emaciated Clarence Hite scuttled in, a Colt Navy .36 caliber six-gun dominating his right hand. He had a skulking hunchbacked look and his hazel eyes kept double-checking his actions with his cousin. He punched his revolver into the green, knee-length coat of a man and said, “I’m Jesse James, ya damned yellow dog! Gimme your money!”

The man fiddled his hand inside his coat and presented Clarence with a worn envelope containing seventy-five dollars and with an English gold watch that would fastidiously chime the hour no matter what skullduggery Clarence was up to at the moment. Clarence shoved the gray-haired man back and joyfully dangled the watch and envelope in Frank’s direction. Frank came back down the aisle and chucked the goods inside the belly of his shirt, and Ed Miller, Clarence Hite, and the infamous Frank James sallied down the coach, stealing coins, dollars, watches, bracelets, rings, stickpins, pendants.

From the express car that was just behind the locomotive and tender came Jesse, Charley, and Dick. They clanged up the stairs at the head of the smoker, saw it was vacant, and rushed down the lighted car, sliding a little on the narrow Persian runner, ringing a brass spittoon against an oaken Doric pedestal. Upon reaching the platform, Jesse rapped on the coach’s doorglass with his gun; Frank swiveled and waved him in; Dick and Charley jostled ahead into the coach as Frank shouted, “Just work your way toward the middle.”

So a number of feuding, keening voices mixed as the gang visited each adult and ordered him or her to shell out. If too meager a sum was exchanged, a cocked revolver was pressed to the person’s forehead and he was told to delve a little further. A bearded man with spectacles lost seven hundred dollars to Ed Miller but Jesse had a hunch about him and after a bickering investigation turned up one hundred dollars more. According to Williams, a Dutchman had managed to remain asleep ever since he dined in Columbia and when Charley socked him awake he at once assumed he was being asked for a fare he’d already paid. Charley pushed his revolver into the Dutchman’s cheek and stole the three hundred dollars with which the man intended to purchase a farm in Joplin. Mr. C. R. Camp was host of a tour of New York land buyers and later tallied their losses at $4,021. Clarence Hite squatted to remove the white shoes from an infant so he could poke his finger inside and rescue God knows what. John O’Brien had stuffed inside his pants a bundle of several hundred dollars clenched by a rubber band, and on the demand of Frank James delivered one thousand dollars that had been for business expenses. The bundle of his own money slithered to the floor and rolled as Frank walked on and O’Brien’s small daughter redeemed it, saying, “Here’s some more money, Papa!” Frank turned and snatched it from her hand. Dick Liddil dictated that Mrs. C. A. Dunakin raise her hands overhead and whirl four times as he inspected her. He said, “Next time we pull off a job like this we’ll have a lady along to search you female passengers.” She retorted, “You might have a woman with you or a man dressed as one, but you’ll never have a lady.” An immigrant had his wallet tossed in a sack and soon beseeched Jesse to recover it so he could withdraw his insurance papers. His plea was denied as too time-consuming. Children wailed in corners, several women became hysterical and remained so throughout the night; men sat in chairs with blank faces, their hands lumped in their laps, having lost fortunes: their crabbed savings, the cost of a cottage, the auction sale of six Holstein cows, a laggard Silver Anniversary watch.