There was no change in the situation in Missouri so far as the Younger
brothers were concerned. Every daylight robbery in any part of the
country, from the Alleghenies to the Rockies, was laid at our doors; we
could not go out without a pair of pistols to protect ourselves from the
attack of we knew not whom; and finally, after one of the young ruffians
who had helped in the robbery of the Missouri Pacific express car at
Otterville “confessed” that we were with the robbers we decided to make
one haul, and with our share of the proceeds start life anew in Cuba,
South America, or Australia.
Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, whom we preferred to call “Silver Spoons” Butler
from his New Orleans experiences during the war, had a lot of money
invested, we were told, in the First National bank at Northfield,
Minnesota, as also had J. T. Ames, Butler’s son-in-law, who had been the
“carpet-bag” governor of Mississippi after the war.
Butler’s treatment of the Southerners during the war was not such as to
commend him to our regard, and we felt little compunction, under the
circumstances, about raiding him or his.
Accordingly, about the middle of August we made up a party to visit
Northfield, going north by rail. There were Jim, Bob and myself, Clell
Miller, who had been accused of the Gad’s Hill, Muncie, Corydon, Hot
Springs and perhaps other bank and train robberies, but who had not been
convicted of any of them; Bill Chadwell, a young fellow from Illinois, and
three men whose names on the expedition were Pitts, Woods and Howard.
We spent a week in Minneapolis, seeing the sights, playing poker and
looking around for information, after which we spent a similar period in
St. Paul.
I was accounted a fairly good poker player in those days, and had won
about $3,000 the winter I was in Florida, while Chadwell was one of the
best that ever played the game.
We both played our last game of poker in St. Paul that week, for he was
soon to die at Northfield, and in the quarter of a century that has passed
since such a change has come over me that I not only have no desire to
play cards, but it disgusts me even to see boys gamble with dice for
cigars.
This last game was at a gambling house on East Third street, between
Jackson and Robert streets, about half a block from the Merchants’ hotel,
where we were stopping. Guy Salisbury, who has since become a minister,
was the proprietor of the gambling house, and Charles Hickson was the
bartender. It was upstairs over a restaurant run by Archie McLeod, who is
still in St. Paul.
Chadwell and I were nearly $300 ahead of the game when Bob came along and
insisted on sitting in, and we left the table. I never would play in a
game where Bob was.
Early in the last week in August we started on the preliminary work for
the Northfield expedition.