Returning to the five strange men in Mankato, they are next seen on the
streets on Monday morning when a young man, Chas. Robinson who was
acquainted with the notorious Jesse James, went up to one of them and
remarked, “How do you do, Jesse, what brings you up this way.” When the
man addressed eyeing the speaker keenly from head to foot, replied, “I
guess you have mistaken your man” and vaulting into the saddle, galloped
away. With this incident, the five men who had attracted so much notice,
excited so much admiration, and aroused many vague suspicions, disappeared
from Mankato. The same day five similarly dressed, similarly mounted, and
similarly appearing, strangers, arrived in Janesville, a village, on the
Winona & St. Peter railroad, in Waseca county, about 18 miles from
Mankato. As at Mankato they stopped at different hotels, two slaying at
the Johnson house, and two at the Farmers’ Home. No one know where the
fifth slept, but on leaving the village on the Tuesday morning they halted
some little distance out, and one, taking off his duster, rode back toward
the village waving it over his head; he was followed in the maneuver by
another when all four rode away. It is thought this was a signal for the
fifth man, who, it is supposed, stopped at some house in the neighborhood.
Those, who stopped at the Johnson house, never made their appearance at
the public table until all of the rest of the boarders had finished their
meals, and during their stay in the town declined to admit a chambermaid
to their room to arrange it. After their departure several packs of
playing cards were found in their room torn up and thrown on the floor,
and several handful of buttons of various sizes were scattered about,
showing that the inmates had been indulging in a protracted game of
“poker.” The girls who waited on them at table, say they were quiet and
polite, and never made any trouble.
Cordova is the next place these “gay cavaliers” turn up, all five of them
staying at the same hotel, three occupying one room, and two another with
a commercial traveler, W. W. Barlow, of Delavan, Wis., who describes them
as polite, jocose fellows. They talked considerably of cattle, and from
their language and peculiar dialect, Mr. Barlow thought them to be cattle
dealers from the south. They left the hotel at 7 o’clock in the morning,
politely raising their hats as they rode off. Cordova is about eighteen
miles, almost directly north from Janesville.
The next night, Wednesday, saw these five men housed at Millersburg, about
twenty-four miles west and north of Cordova, in Rice county. They left
here at an early hour on Tuesday morning, and at about 10 o’clock appeared
in the streets of Northfield, which lies about eleven miles north-west of
the latter village.
On the same Wednesday evening, four men who answered the description of
some of the bandits stopped at a hotel in Cannon City. The landlord thinks
they were Bob Younger, Bill Chadwell, and the two men who finally escaped.
He says that the next morning, the 7th, while three of the men were at
breakfast, one retired to his room and remained a long time with the door
locked. After all had departed, the chambermaid discovered a bloody shirt
and a portion of a pair of drawers, one leg of the latter being torn off
and carried away. The drawers were soiled with blood and matter, such as
would come from an old inflamed gun wound, and it was evident that the
wearer had such a wound on one of his legs. This is considered evidence
that the man arrested in Missouri, in October, and supposed to have been
one of the James brothers, was really him, but the alibi proved by that
party appears to be sufficient to prove that it was not.
It will be seen by the foregoing that there were originally nine men
engaged in the plot, which gives plausibility to the opinion held by many
that the terrible tragedy which followed was the result of a plan
conceived by some Minnesota desperadoes, who engaged these desperate
southern cut-throats to assist in it.