Northfield Part 18

Fear not, Mister James. I shall take the matter up personally with Mister Broadbent upon my return to Sioux City.

Like a great Thespian, like Barnett or Booth, he turned his mood around as he rode to the next farm, switching our horses, putting me on the bay, leaving his brother in the road to watch for lawmen or errant travelers. The farmer exited his sod-die as we eased our mounts toward his watering trough. Jesse did all the talking. Thinking of the armory this a.s.sa.s.sin carried about his waist, I prayed the farmer would not suspect anything.

"I'm on my way with Doctor Mosher to the Mann farm, and his stirrup strap busted on him," the outlaw lied. "It's an emergency, mister, and we need to borrow a saddle off you. So the doc can save poor Missus Mann's life."

The farmer studied me, then Jesse, and I held my breath. "There's a Morgan in my barn," he said. "Fetch it yourself and don't forget to bring it back."

Our next stop, around 6 o'clock for supper, proved a tad more hospitable, as we ate cornbread and soup before departing, paying 40 cents for the meal, making our way three more miles before reining in to bed down, I hoped, for the night.

"Doc," Frank James said wearily, "I must ask if you'd be kind enough to help me down off this horse."

I'm no horseman, sir. My legs are stiff as a fence post.

"Sure," I said, and coaxed the tall man out of his saddle, let him lean against me as we walked a few rods away and sat on the ground. Without a word, Frank James returned the lancet and medicine case, and I understood.

"Remove your pants, sir," I instructed him.

The bullet had carved a wicked gash a few inches above the knee joint, and how it had eluded infection might be an entry for the medical journals. As I examined the gash more closely, I found it amazing that this man had not bled to death. The wound, I was informed, had been received during the robbery. More than two weeks had pa.s.sed, and I estimated the distance must be 250 miles, if not more, from Northfield to Sioux City-and they had fled west first, to Dakota Territory, and southeast, traveling hard, on horseback and ankle express, through the elements, fighting their way out of one sc.r.a.p after another, covering much, much more than 250 miles.

What day is it? September 25th. Great Scott! And...what is this dark substance, remnants on the side of the wound and in the scabs?

I eyed Frank James with a mixture of curiosity and amazement.

"Gunpowder," he said. "Emptied it from the casings. Pounded it with the b.u.t.t of my Remington, till it was fine as I could get it, then poured it over the gash, wrapped it with whatever I had handy. You learn to use what you have on hand, Doc, and, during the war, we figured how gunpowder can be a pretty good...." He could not find the word.

"Styptic," I said.

"Well, I'm still kicking." Again he revealed an infectious smile. "Just not kicking so high lately."

You learn to use what you have on hand. How true. During the war, I st.i.tched saber wounds with anything from thread and horsehair to fis.h.i.+ng line and fiddle strings.

I cleaned Frank James's ugly gash as best I could, using the bandage I had intended for Mrs. Mann's neck on his thigh and offering him a tincture of opium to relieve the pain. Upon completion, I told him he could put his pants back on, only to find myself staring into his revolver.

"I reckon not, Doc. Mister Huddleson borrowed your horse. Now I'm going to swap my clothes for yours."

They won't fit, you fool. You have five inches on me.

The hammer of the .44 clicked. clicked.

I undressed.

Frank James's rags looked horrible on me, especially with the sleeves and pant legs rolled up, but the outlaw looked even more ridiculous in my ill-fitting $15 suit. The moon was rising by then, and a horse snorted behind me. To my surprise, during my examination of Frank James, his brother had sneaked off to a nearby farm and returned with a blue roan mare. The two grays were gone, but my bay-or should I say, Mr. Broadbent's, saddled still with the farmer's Morgan-stood ready at Jesse's side.

The Schofield had returned to Jesse's right hand, but first he pointed at a light perhaps a half mile away.

"See that farm, Doc?" he asked.

"Yes."

Now the .45 aimed at my head, again.

"You reckon you can run all that way and not turn around? Because I'll kill you if you turn around."

"So long, Doc," Frank James told me. "Your shoes don't fit worth a d.a.m.n."

I did not wait to formulate a reply. I ran- Frank's worn, ruined boots, three sizes too large for my small feet, flapping in the night. At any instant, I expected to feel bullets tear into my back, and, as I stumbled, staggered, and loped in an awkward gait, the events of my kidnapping pulled taut my nerves. My legs buckled from the strain, fear enveloped me, and the light from the farmhouse did not appear to be drawing closer.

They'll kill me. They'll kill me. They'll kill me, shoot me in the back.

They didn't, though. Fancy that. I would survive the ordeal and remove Mrs. Mann's goiter in the afternoon, but not before sending a posse after my kidnappers. Jesse and Frank James would survive to reach Missouri, though, where they would rob and murder again.

But that was in the future. This was tonight.

I ran northeast. The James brothers galloped south.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

SHERIFF A ARA B BURTON.

The November morning brought a hint of snow, gray clouds blocking out the sun, and a crisp wind tried to cool the packed Rice County Courthouse room in Faribault. As my deputy escorted the defendants inside through the side door, their chains rattling, every man's head craned to get a glimpse at the three Younger brothers, and I read disappointment in almost every spectator's face.

Cole, Bob, and Jim Younger were freshly shaven, clean, wearing new clothes donated by various Faribault ladies. These men didn't look like killers, didn't resemble the ragged, wretched souls who had disembarked the train back on September 23rd. Cole was practically bald, and the only evidence of any grave wounds that could be detected were the small bandages plastered to Jim Younger's face. While my deputy removed their manacles, I stepped forward, took Mrs. Twyman, an aunt of the killers, by the arm and escorted her to the defense table. Retta Younger, sister of the brothers, walked behind us. I let them sit within the bar beside attorneys Batchelder, Buckham, and Rutledge.

The courtroom didn't stay cool, not as more and more people crammed inside, hugging the back walls. Mrs. Twyman began fanning herself with Jim Younger's hat, and, when the clock chimed ten, I stepped to the judge's bench and called court to order, the Honorable Judge Samuel Lord presiding.

"Thomas Coleman Younger," Judge Lord said in his stern baritone, "step forward." The big man looked nervous, placing his hands behind his back as he limped to the judge's bench, then dropping them at his side. He couldn't even look the judge in the eye. "You are charged with the crimes of accessory to the murder in the first degree of Joseph Lee Heywood on the Seventh of September in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Six in the city of Northfield, state of Minnesota; with felonious a.s.sault with intent to kill one Alonzo Bunker on the Seventh of September in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Six in the city of Northfield, state of Minnesota; with the armed robbery of the First National Bank on the Seventh of September in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Six in the city of Northfield, state of Minnesota, and with the murder in the first degree of Nicolaus Gustavson on the Seventh of September in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Six in the city of Northfield, state of Minnesota. How do you plead?"

My right hand slid into my coat pocket, and I fingered the note Cole Younger had written me the night before. I had visited him in his cell, told him it would go easier on him if he revealed the men who had gotten away, the men everyone knew to be the James brothers but could not prove. Younger wrote a note and handed it to me in silence. I knew what the note said. I knew how Younger would plead. I knew the sentence the judge would hand down, but still I found myself, like the rest of them in the courtroom that morning, holding my breath.

The prisoners hadn't been in my custody long before Adelbert Ames paid them a visit. Ames had charged Cole Younger with the murder of the Swede, Nicolaus Gustavson, during the robbery.

"How many men did you kill, Governor," Younger said at first, "down in Mississippi, you carpetbagging son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h?"

"I shot down no one, d.a.m.n you. You killed the Swede. Murdered him!"

"That's a d.a.m.n' lie!" the big man roared. "If anyone killed him, it was you, you and them city folks firing shots every which way. We kept shooting in the air, trying to keep innocent people from getting shot. It was you who killed that Swede."

"Liar! Liar and murderer!"

I had to pull Ames out of the cell, led him down the corridor. Tensions ran high back then, but now it was mid-November, and the trial had finally begun.

"Guilty." Cole Younger spoke so softly I heard a newspaper reporter on the first row ask a fellow journalist: "What did he say?"

"So be it," Judge Lord said, and called Jim Younger forward after ordering Cole back to his seat.

The charges were mostly the same, the exception being that Jim and Bob would only be charged with accessory to murder of the Swede. Relief swept over the faces of many in the crowd, but others looked disappointed, wanting to carry the fight on forever. At last, Cole Younger looked at ease, too. Jim tried to act a little more c.o.c.ksure, but I've yet to see a man who could look a judge in the eye without his voice quaking. Jim did the best he could-his speech badly impaired from the bullet wound taken at Hanska Slough-and the judge instructed him to be seated after writing down the guilty plea. Bob Younger would plead guilty, as well.

Cole Younger would talk to anyone at first, although we both restricted visitors after Mr. Ames's visit, but Jim stayed in his room, his mood dangerously low. He wouldn't even speak to his sister and aunt when they visited, just laid on his cot and stared at the ceiling, crying sometimes, consumed by gloom.

Bob, the youngest, had been the most popular with the ladies. I had boxes and bouquets piled on my desk, sent by young women too shy to ask to visit the outlaw himself. So many presents came, I had to parcel them out, even tried to give some to Jim Younger, but he had remained morose, till that morning in the courtroom when he put on an act.

"The charges having been read, and the defendants having entered pleas of guilt to all charges, it is my duty to pa.s.s sentence on you," Judge Lord said.

My fingers still touched the note.

"Have you anything to say on your behalf?"

Retta Younger sobbed, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

Some people in Rice County thought the Youngers should have been charged with another crime.

Back in October, Deputy Frank Glaser was guarding the outside of the jail, when another deputy, Henry Kapanick, started walking toward him on the night of the 2nd. You have to understand how things were then. Rumors kept spreading that the James brothers, or other bushwhackers, would sack Faribault the way they had almost wiped out Lawrence during the war. Maybe I should have asked for help from the Army instead of pinning badges on inexperienced civilians and giving them rifles and pistols.

Late that night Kapanick walked toward a fairly frightened Glaser. Turns out that Kapanick's pals had bet him $5 he could get to the jail without a problem. Perhaps we should have put those friends-friends, h.e.l.l-on trial for what happened.

Glaser said, and I have no reason to doubt him, shaken up as he was after that incident, he spotted the figure and called out to stop.

"Who are you?" Glaser said when the man kept walking.

"Don't you know I'm a policeman?" the man said, still walking.

"Stop!" Glaser cried. "I don't know you!" He brought up his rifle, and, when Kapanick reached inside his breast pocket, Glaser said he feared the man was pulling a revolver or knife. Scared for his life, Glaser pulled the trigger.

The buried Henry Kapanick the following afternoon, and an inquest found that Glaser had acted in self-defense.

I just wondered when this would all end.

As three Younger brothers shook their heads, Bob Younger answered: "No, Your Honor. Nothing to say."

The judge grunted. "It becomes my duty, then, to pa.s.s sentence upon you," he said. "I have no words of comfort for you or desire to reproach or deride you. While the law leaves you life, all its pleasures, all its hopes, all its joys are gone out from you, and all that is left is the empty sh.e.l.l."

"'Leaves you life.' What does that mean?" someone in the gallery whispered. "Ain't they hangin' 'em?"

It was the Madelia lawyer, Thomas Rutledge, who had first informed the prisoners of Minnesota law. Plead guilty to first degree murder, and the statutes demand life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole after ten years. Plead not guilty, and upon conviction-and no one doubted a jury would convict the Youngers-the death sentence could be meted out.

"Is that true, Sheriff?" Cole Younger asked me.

"It's the law," I conceded.

"Life or death, huh?"

"That's the game you've been playing all along, Cole."

"Silence in this courtroom!" Judge Lord roared, and the whisperer sank into his seat. "Thomas Coleman Younger, I hereby sentence you to spend the rest of your natural life in the state prison of Minnesota in Stillwater. May G.o.d have mercy on your soul."

The courtroom didn't remain silent for long. Bob and Jim Younger were also sentenced to life, and hurriedly we placed the manacles on them while their sister and aunt bawled, chained the prisoners together as the judge pounded his gavel and bellowed for silence, then gave up and adjourned court. We led the Youngers through the side door, hurried them to the jail, and locked them in their cells.

"Thanks, Sheriff!" Cole Younger called out to me as I left the corridor. "Reckon I still thought they'd hang us."

"Perhaps you could have gotten a shorter sentence," I told him, "had you named your...."

He was smiling, shaking his head, and I did not finish. Outside, I withdrew the note he had written.

It's finally over, I thought. Snow had started falling, Thanksgiving was right around the corner, and I always found the first snowfall to be cleansing, purifying, beautiful. A church choir had gathered around the outside of the jail and started singing "Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?"

I unfolded the note.

Be true to your friends if the heavens fall.Cole Younger Folding the note again, sliding it into my coat pocket, I pulled up my collar, and walked home.

EPILOGUE.

COLE Y YOUNGER.

Seven minutes...seemed like seven lifetimes.

Maybe it was, too. Seven lifetimes. Seven lives.

I think about that now, as this train carries me home, southward, at last back to Missouri, after twenty-five years in the Stillwater prison and a couple more as a paroled old fool.

Seven lives. Count 'em.

Joe Heywood, the fellow inside the Northfield bank. I've sworn that Charlie Pitts killed the cas.h.i.+er, figuring how Charlie wouldn't mind, being dead and all, and I've sworn that the James boys was nowhere with us in Minnesota, that we'd latched on to a couple of no-accounts named Wood and Howard, and that they're both dead now, one killed in an act of violence down in Arizona and the other claimed by fever. I've sworn lots of things. Even placed my hand on the Good Book and said that I had nothing to do with the killing of that Swede.

h.e.l.l, I killed the Swede. Don't even know why. Lost my temper, saw my brothers getting shot up. And my best friend, ol' Buck, he laid the banker low, and I'll never know why. Not sure even Buck knows why he done it. But he did. And it's over. Nothing can bring either one of 'em back.

Joe Heywood and the Swede, Gustavson. That's two lives.

Bill Stiles and those loyal boys-Clell Miller, smoking that pipe, and Charlie Pitts, telling me that he could die as game as us Youngers. Three more. That makes five.

Then there's my brothers.

When we pleaded guilty, avoiding the noose, they raised a ruction all over Minnesota. Figured we'd get maybe ten years, if we behaved ourselves, and that we done. But Yankees can be hard-pressed to forget. They never wanted us to set foot out of prison alive. Said they'd see us all dead.

Well, Brother Bob, he was the first to go. Just never did get over that chest wound he took at Hanska Slough. Come down with consumption, a death sentence after all. He was always asking us if we'd forgive him, if Jim and I would accept his apologies for getting us in this fix, that it was all his fault, on account he hadn't listened to us, but we told Bob he wasn't to blame. Jim and me, being older, should have made him listen. Besides, we didn't have to ride north with him. Family, like Jim used to say.

Stillwater ain't no place for a lunger, but Bob lasted longer than most give him. In the summer of '89, the old sawbones at the prison hospital told Bob and the rest of us that he was a goner, said he could go back to his cell or wait it out in the hospital. Bob said he'd just as soon stay in the hospital. We sent off a wire to Sister Retta, and she come up.