Part 29 (1/2)
JESSE AND FRANK ADMISSION 50C.
KODAKS BARED
That word ”bared” is not bad proofreading; it was spelled like that on the sign.
As we moved in the direction of the house a tall, slender old man with a large hooked nose and a white beard and mustache walked toward us. He was dressed in an exceedingly neat suit and wore a large black felt hat of the type common throughout Missouri. Coming up, he greeted our escort cordially, after which we were introduced. It was Frank James.
The former outlaw is a shrewd-looking, well preserved man, whose carriage, despite his seventy-one years, is notably erect. He looks more like a prosperous farmer or the president of a rural bank than like a bandit. In his manner there is a strong note of the showman. It is not at all objectionable, but it is there, in the same way that it is there in Buffalo Bill. Frank James is an interesting figure; on meeting him you see, at once, that he knows he is an interesting figure and that he trades upon the fact. He is clearly an intelligent man, but he has been looked at and listened to for so many years, as a kind of curiosity, that he has the air of going through his tricks for one--of getting off a line of practised patter. It is pretty good patter, as patter goes, inclining to quotation, epigram, and homely philosophy, delivered in an a.s.sured ”platform manner.”
It may be well here to remind the reader of the history of the James Gang.
The father and mother of the ”boys” came from Kentucky to Missouri. The father was a Baptist minister and a slaveholder. He died before the war, and his widow married a man named Samuels, by whom she had several children.
From the year 1856 Missouri, which was a slave state, warred with Kansas, which was a free state, and there was much barbarity along the border. The ”Jayhawkers,” or Kansas guerrillas, would make forays into Missouri, stealing cattle, burning houses, and committing all manner of depredations; and lawless gangs of Missourians would retaliate, in kind, on Kansas. Among the most appalling cutthroats on the Missouri side was a man named Quantrell, head of the Quantrell gang, a body of guerrillas which sometimes numbered upward of a thousand men. The James boys were members of this gang, Frank James joining at the opening of the Civil War, and Jesse two years later, at the age of sixteen. In speaking of joining Quantrell, Frank James spoke of ”going into the army.” Quantrell was, however, a mere border ruffian and was disowned by the Confederate army.
According to Frank James, Quantrell, who was born in Ca.n.a.l Dover, Ohio, went west, with his brother, to settle. In Kansas they were set upon by ”Jayhawkers” and ”Redlegs,” with the result that Quantrell's brother was killed and that Quantrell himself was wounded and left for dead. He was, however, nursed to life by a Nez Perce Indian. When he recovered he became determined to have revenge upon the Kansans. To that end, he affected to be in sympathy with them, and joined some of their marauding bands. When he had established himself in their confidence he used to get himself sent out on scouting expeditions with one or two other men, and it was his amiable custom, upon such occasions, to kill his companions and return with a story of an attack by the enemy in which the others had met death. At last, when he had played this trick so often that he feared detection, he determined to get himself clear of his fellows. A plan had been matured for an attack upon the house of a rich slaveholder. Quantrell went to the house in advance, betrayed the plan, and arranged to join forces with the defenders. This resulted in the death of his seven or eight companions. At about this time the war came on, and Quantrell became a famous guerrilla leader, falling on detached bodies of Northern troops and ma.s.sacring them, and even attacking towns--one of his worst offenses having been the ma.s.sacre of most of the male inhabitants of Lawrence, Kas. He gave as the reason for his atrocities his desire for revenge for the death of his brother, and also used to allege that he was a Southerner, though that was not true.
I asked Frank James how he came to join Quantrell, when the war broke out, instead of enlisting in the regular army.
”We knew he was not a very fine character,” he explained, ”but we were like the followers of Villa or Huerta: we wanted to destroy the folks that wanted to destroy us, and we would follow any man that would show us how to do it. Besides, I was young then. When a man is young his blood is hot; there's a million things he'll do then that he won't do when he's older. There's a story about a man at a banquet. He was offered champagne to drink, but he said: 'I want quick action. I'll take Bourbon whisky.' That was the way I felt. That's why I joined Quantrell: to get quick action. And I got it, too. Jesse and I were with Quantrell until he was killed in Kentucky.”
John Samuels, a half brother of the James boys, told me the story of how Jesse James came to join Quantrell.
”Jesse was out plowing in a field,” he said, ”when some Northern soldiers came to the place to look for Frank. Jesse was only sixteen years old. They beat him up. Then they went to the house and asked where Frank was. Mother and father didn't know, but the soldiers wouldn't believe them. They took father out and hung him by the neck to a tree.
After a while they took him down and gave him another chance to tell. Of course he couldn't. So they hung him up again. They did that three times. Then they took him back to the house and told my mother they were going to shoot him. She begged them not to do it, but they took him off in the woods and fired off their guns so she'd hear, and think they'd done it. But they didn't shoot him. They just took him over to another town and put him in jail. My mother didn't know until the next day that he hadn't been shot, because the soldiers ordered her to remain in the house if she didn't want to get shot, too.
”That was too much for Jesse. He said: 'Maw, I can't stand it any longer; I'm going to join Quantrell.' And he did.”
After the war the wilder element from the disbanded armies and guerrilla gangs caused continued trouble. Crime ran rampant along the border between Kansas and Missouri. And for many crimes committed in the neighborhood in which they lived, the James boys, who were known to be wild, were blamed.
”Mother always said,” declared Mr. Samuels, ”that Frank and Jesse wanted to settle down after the war, but that the neighbors wouldn't let them.
Everything that went wrong around this region was always charged to them, until, finally, they were driven to outlawry.”
”How much truth is there in the different stories of bank robberies and train robberies committed by them?” I asked.
”I don't know,” he said. ”Of course they did a lot of things. But we never knew. They never said anything. They'd just come riding home, every now and then, and stop for a while, and then go riding away again.
We never knew where they came from or where they went.”
It has been alleged that even after a reward of $10,000 had been offered for either of the Jameses, dead or alive, the neighbors s.h.i.+elded them when it was known that they were at home. I spoke about that to an old man who lived on a nearby farm.
”Yes,” he said, ”that's true. Once when the Pinkertons were hunting them I met Frank and some members of the gang riding along the road, not far from here. I could have told, but I didn't want to. I wasn't looking for any trouble with the James Gang. Suppose they had caught one or two of them? There'd be others left to get even with me, and I had my family to think of. That is the way lots of the neighbors felt about it. They were afraid to tell.”
I spoke to Frank James about the old ”nickel novels.”
”Yes,” he said, ”some fellows printed a lot of stuff. I'd have stopped it, maybe, if I'd had as much money as Rockefeller. But what could I do? I tell you those yellow-backed books have done a lot of harm to the youth of this land--those and the moving pictures, showing robberies.
Such things demoralize youth. If I had the job of censoring the moving pictures, they'd say I was a reg'lar Robespierre!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: We strolled in the direction of the old house, that house of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times.... It was there that the Pinkertons threw the bomb.]
”How about some of the old stories of robberies in which you were supposed to have taken part?” I asked.