THE TAME LION
The James farm occupies a pretty bit of rolling land, at one corner of
which, near the road, Frank James has built himself a neat, substantial
frame house.
Before the house is a large gate, bearing a sign as follows:
JAMES FARMS
HOME OF THE JAMES'
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
assured "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 Canal 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 massacring them, and even
attacking towns--one of his worst offenses having been the massacre 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 shielded 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!"
[Illustration: 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.
"I neither affirm nor deny," Frank James answered, with the glibness of
long custom. "If I admitted that these stories were true, people would
say: 'There is the greatest scoundrel unhung!' and if I denied 'em,
they'd say: 'There's the greatest liar on earth!' So I just say
nothing."
According to John Samuels, Frank James and Cole Younger were generally
acknowledged to be the brains of the James Gang. "It was claimed," he
said, "that Frank planned and Jesse executed. Frank was certainly the
cool man of the two, and Jesse was a little bit excitable. He had the
name of being the quickest man in the world with a gun. Sometimes when
he was home for a visit, when I was a boy, he'd be sitting there in the
house, and there'd come some little noise. Then he'd whip out his pistol
so quick you couldn't see the motion of his hand."
As we conversed we strolled in the direction of the old house, that
house of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times. On
the way we passed Frank James's chicken coop, and I noticed that on it
had been painted the legend: "Bull Moose--T. R."
"The wing, at the back, is the old part of the house," James explained.
"It was there that the Pinkertons threw the bomb."
I asked about the bomb throwing and heard the story from John Samuels,
who was there when it occurred.
"I was a child of thirteen then," he said, "and I was the only one in
the room who wasn't killed or crippled. It happened at night. We had
suspected for a long time that a man named Laird, who was working as a
farm hand for a neighbor of ours named Askew on that farm over
there"--he indicated a farmhouse on a nearby hill--"was a Pinkerton
man, and that he was there to watch for Frank and Jesse. Well, one night
he must have decided they were at home, for the house was surrounded
while we were asleep. A lot of torches were put around in the yard to
give light. Then the house was set on fire in seven places and a bomb
was thrown in through this window." He pointed to a window in the side
of the old log wing. "It was about midnight. My mother and little
brother and I were in the room. Mother kicked the bomb into the
fireplace before it went off. The fuse was sputtering. Maybe she even
thought of throwing the thing out of the window again. Anyhow, when it
exploded it blew off her forearm and killed my little brother."
"Come in the house," invited Frank James. "We've got a piece of the bomb
in there."
We entered the old cabin. In the fireplace marks of the explosion are
still visible. The piece of the bomb which they preserve is a
bowl-shaped bit of iron, about the size of a bread-and-butter plate.
"What was their idea in throwing the bomb?" I asked.
"As near as we know," replied Frank James, "the Pinkertons figured that
Jesse and I were sleeping in the front part of the house. You see,
there's a little porch running back from the main house to the door of
the old cabin. They must have figured that when the bomb went off we
would run out on the porch to see what was the matter. Then they were
going to bag us."
"Well, did you run out?"
"Evidently not," said Frank James.
"Were you there?" I asked.
"Some think we were and some think not," he said.
An old man who had been constable of the township at the time the James
boys were on the warpath had come up and joined us.
"How about Askew?" I suggested. "I should have thought he would have
been afraid to harbor a Pinkerton man."
The old man nodded. "You'd of thought so, wouldn't you?" he agreed.
"Askew was shot dead three months after the bomb throwing. He was
carrying a pail of milk from the stable to the house when he got three
bullets in the face."
"Who killed him?" I asked.
The old constable allowed his eyes to drift ruminatively over the
neighboring hillsides before replying. Frank James and his half brother,
who were standing by, also heard my question, and they, too, became
interested in the surrounding scenery.
"Well-l," said the old constable at last, "that's always been a
question."
* * * * *
Mr. Samuels told me details concerning the death of Jesse James.
"Things were getting pretty hot for the boys," he said. "Big rewards had
been offered for them. Frank was in hiding down South, and Jesse was
married and living under an assumed name in a little house he had rented
in St. Joe, Mo. That was in 1882. There had been some hints of trouble
in the gang. Dick Little, one of the boys, had gotten in with the
authorities, and it had been rumored that he had won the Ford boys over,
too. Jesse had heard that report, but he had confidence in Charlie Ford.
Bob Ford he didn't trust so much. Well, Charlie and Bob Ford came to St.
Joe to see Jesse and his wife. They were sitting around the house one
day, and Jesse's wife wanted him to dust a picture for her. He was
always a great hand to help his wife. He moved a chair over under the
picture, and before getting up on it to dust, he took his belt and
pistols off and threw them on the bed. Then he got up on the chair.
While he was standing there Bob Ford shot him in the back.
"Well, Bob died a violent death a while after that. He was shot by a
man named Kelly in a saloon in Creede, Colo. And Charlie Ford brooded
over the killing of Jesse and committed suicide about a year later. The
three Younger boys, who were members of the gang, too, were captured a
while after, near Northfield, Minn., where they had tried to rob a bank.
They were all sent up for life. Bob Younger died in the penitentiary at
Stillwater, but Cole and Jim were paroled and not allowed to leave the
State. Jim fell in love with a woman, but being an ex-convict, he
couldn't get a license to marry her. That broke his heart and he
committed suicide. Cole finally got a full pardon and is now living in
Jackson County, Missouri. He and Frank are the only two members of the
Gang who are left and the only two that didn't die either in the
penitentiary or by violence. Frank was in hiding for years with a big
price on his head. At last he gave himself up, stood trial, and was
acquitted."
Adherents of Bob Ford told a different story of the motives back of the
killing of Jesse James. They contend that Jesse James thought Ford had
been "telling things" and ought to be put out of the way, and that in
killing Jesse, Ford practically saved his own life.
Whatever may be the truth, it is generally agreed that the action of
Jesse James in taking off his guns and turning his back on the Ford boys
was unprecedented. He had never before been known to remove his weapons.
Some people think he did it as a piece of bravado. Others say he did it
to show the Ford boys that he trusted them. But whatever the occasion
for the action it gave Bob Ford his chance--a chance which, it is
thought, he would not have dared take when Jesse James was armed.
* * * * *
During the course of our visit Frank James "lectured," more or less
constantly, touching on a variety of subjects, including the Mexican
situation and woman suffrage.
"The women ought to have the vote," he affirmed. "Look what we owe to
the women. A man gets 75 per cent. of what goodness there is in him from
his mother, and he owes at least 40 per cent. of all he makes to his
wife. Yes, some men owe more than that. Some of 'em owe 100 per cent. to
their wives."
Ethics and morality seem to be favorite topics with the old man, and he
makes free with quotations from the Bible and from Shakespeare in
substantiation of his opinions.
"City people," I heard him say to some other visitors who came while we
were there, "think that we folks who live on farms haven't got no sense.
Well, we may not know much, but what we do know we know darn well. We
farmers _feed_ all these smart folks in the cities, so they ought to
give us credit for knowing _some_thing."
He can be dry and waggish as he shows himself off to those who come and
pay their fifty cents. It was amusing to watch him and listen to him.
Sometimes he sounded like an old parson, but his air of piety sat upon
him grotesquely as one reflected on his earlier career. A prelate with
his hat cocked rakishly over one ear could have seemed hardly more
incongruous.
[Illustration: It was Frank James.... 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]
At some of his virtuous platitudes it was hard not to smile. All the
time I was there I kept thinking how like he was to some character of
Gilbert's. All that is needed to make Frank James complete is some
lyrics and some music by Sir Arthur Sullivan.
* * * * *
There are almost as many stories of the James Boys and their gang to be
heard in Excelsior Springs as there are houses in the town. But as Frank
James will not commit himself, it is next to impossible to verify them.
However, I shall give a sample.
I was told that Frank and Jesse James were riding along a country road
with another member of the gang, and that, coming to a farmhouse shortly
after noon, they stopped and asked the woman living there if she could
give them "dinner"--as the midday meal is called in Kansas and Missouri.
The woman said she could. They dismounted and entered. Then, as they sat
in the kitchen watching her making the meal ready, Jesse noticed that
tears kept coming to her eyes. Finally he asked her if anything was
wrong. At that she broke down completely, informing him that she was a
widow, that her farm was mortgaged for several hundred dollars, and that
the man who held the mortgage was coming out that afternoon to collect.
She had not the money to pay him and expected to lose her property.
"That's nothing to cry about," said Jesse. "Here's the money."
To the woman, who had not the least idea who the men were, their visit
must have seemed like one from angels. She took the money, thanking them
profusely, and, after having fed them well, saw them ride away.
Later in the day, when the holder of the mortgage appeared upon the
scene, fully expecting to foreclose, he was surprised at receiving
payment in full. He receipted, mounted his horse, and set out on his
return to town. But on the way back a strange thing befell him. He was
held up and robbed by three mysterious masked men.