The coroner’s jury acquitted John, and there were many people in
Independence who felt that he had done just right.
When I went to Louisiana in 1868 John went with me, afterward accompanying
me to Texas. Clerking in a store in Dallas, he became associated with
some young fellows of reckless habits and drank somewhat.
One day, while they were all in a gay mood, John shot the pipe out of the
mouth of a fellow named Russell. Russell jumped up and ran out of the
room.
“Don’t kill him,” shouted the crowd in ridicule, and John fired several
random shots to keep up the scare.
Russell swore out a warrant for John’s arrest, and next morning, Jan. 17,
1871, Capt. S. W. Nichols, the sheriff, and John McMahon came up to the
house to arrest him. John made no resistance and invited the officers to
breakfast, but they declined and went back down town. Thompson McDaniels
called John’s attention to the fact that a guard had been stationed over
his horses, and they walked down town together. Tom and John drank some
whisky, and while they were waiting Nichols and his party had taken on
some too.
“What did you put a guard over my horses for?” asked John, when he entered
the room where Nichols was.
“I did not put any guard over your horses,” replied Nichols.
“You’re a——liar,” continued John, “I saw them there myself.”
At this another Russell, a brother of the one whose pipe had been shot out
of his mouth, opened fire on John and wounded him in the arm. Thomp.
McDaniels shot Capt. Nichols, and in the melee McMahon was shot, as far as
I have ever been able to learn, by my brother.
John and McDaniels went out, took the officers’ horses and rode to
Missouri.
It developed after the shooting that the same Russell who had opened fire
on John had placed the guard over the horses, and that Capt. Nichols had
not known of it.
I was away in Louisiana at the time, but on my return several attorneys
offered to defend John if he would return for trial, but after a visit at
the home of our uncle in California he returned to Missouri in the winter
of 1873 and 1874, just in time to be suspected of the train robbery at
Gad’s Hill, on the Iron Mountain road.
John and Jim were visiting at the home of our friend, Theodoric Snuffer,
at Monegaw Springs, St. Clair county.
Man-hunters had sought us there on a previous occasion when we were all
four there. We had come upon the party of 15 suddenly, and I covered them
with a shot-gun, demanded their surrender, and explaining that we had not
robbed anybody, and wanted to be treated as decent citizens, approached by
officers of the law in the regular manner if we were accused, restored
their arms to them, and they went back to Osceola.
March 11, 1874, J. W. Whicher, a Pinkerton detective from Chicago, who had
been sent out to arrest Frank and Jesse James at Kearney, was found dead
in the road near Independence, and W. J. Allen, otherwise known as Capt.
Lull, a St. Louis plain-clothes cop who passed by the name of Wright, and
an Osceola boy named Ed. Daniels, who was a deputy sheriff with an
ambition to shine as a sleuth, rode out to find Jim and Bob at the
Springs.
The boys, advised of their coming by a negro servant, sought to convince
them, as we had the earlier posse, that they could not have had anything
to do with the affair at Gad’s Hill. But Allen, remembering the recent
fate of Whicher, drew his pistol and shot John in the neck. John returned
the fire and killed Daniels and took after Allen. Side by side the horses
galloped, John firing at the detective till he fell from the saddle
mortally wounded. John turned to ride back to where Jim was, when he
toppled from his saddle and was dead in a few minutes.
The St. Louis detective had fled at the first fire, and lived to tell
graphic stories of how it all happened, although he was really too busy
getting out to know anything about it.