The Trail Grew Cold (Part 6 of 6)

Once they were free of Bob Younger, Jesse and Frank lost no time galloping their mounts across the prairie to the imagined safety of Dakota Territory, traveling over a hundred twenty miles in just three days’ time.  Their path took them farther north, then farther south, then farther north again, but always west, the changes in direction meant to throw off anyone trying to predict their route.  They always managed to elude the posses forming ahead of them, and those behind them could never seem to travel as fast as they could.  Of course, Jesse and Frank were running for their lives, and the posses weren’t.  Whenever their horses wore out, and a number of them did, they stole a new pair.  Of course, it’s hard to judge how well a horse will do just by looking at it.  One stolen pair turned out to be a particularly poor choice, one horse blind in one eye, the other horse blind in both.  It wasn’t long before those two were “traded” for a new pair.

They crossed into Dakota Territory somewhere north of Sioux Falls, then headed south.  If they believed the pursuit would end once past the boundary between Minnesota and Dakota Territory, they were mistaken.  As they crossed the Big Sioux River into Iowa, they still had posses behind them and more posses awaited ahead, posses that produced no better results than those in Minnesota.  Somewhere in Iowa the trail grew cold; no one other than the two brothers knew what path finally took them back to Missouri.  Some speculate they slipped into Nebraska and then Kansas but that would have required them to cross the Missouri River.  More likely they stayed the course in Iowa, gradually winding their way south into Missouri.  Once there, they had friends and kinfolk who would hide them until a cousin who had a falling out with Jesse betrayed their whereabouts to Clay County Sheriff John Groom.

Narrowly escaping what appeared to be their likely capture by Sheriff Groom, the two again fled the state, this time to Tennessee where Jesse lived under the alias J.D. Howard, and Frank the alias of B.J. Woodson.  There they would remain for several years, posing as farmers though they never were much good at it.  Jesse raised a few racehorses and spent a great deal of time at the track.  When the money ran out, he returned to Missouri, still under the alias of J.D. Howard, living in St. Joseph where he formed a new gang.

The new gang wasn’t like the old.  Save for the incident concerning Bob, the Younger and James boys had always maintained a deep loyalty toward each other, a bond forged during the war.  The new guys were just a bunch of young thugs who wanted easy money.  It isn’t clear if Jesse ever really trusted any of them.  The gang robbed a couple of trains in Missouri, a couple of stagecoaches in Kentucky, and an Army Corps of Engineers paymaster in Alabama.  Frank returned to Missouri to join the gang just in time for a fateful train robbery near Winston, Missouri, during which the conductor and a passenger were murdered.  A couple of months later the gang staged the Blue Cut train robbery in Missouri.  Neither train heist garnered much cash, so they had to plan for their next big score.

That would have been a bank in Platte City, but before that could happen, a “dirty little coward” by the name of Bob Ford put a bullet in the back of J.D. Howard’s head at his residence in St, Joseph.  Bob and his brother Charley were members of Jesse’s gang but had been conspiring with the governor to bring Jesse in, dead or alive.  The reward for turning him over to authorities alive was $40,000, dead, $10,000.  The two knew how dangerous Jesse was.  If they failed to take him alive, he would surely kill them both.  They settled for the smaller reward.

Frank remained at large but eventually surrendered to the authorities in Missouri and was brought to trial for various crimes around the state.  He was acquitted of all counts for which he had been accused, having enough friends and kinfolk willing to provide testimony on his behalf, truthful or not, which provided alibis that proved he could not have committed any of the crimes.  Minnesota still wanted to extradite him to stand trial for Heywood’s murder, but the governor of Missouri at the time remained a devout Southern sympathizer and was not about to cooperate with the Yankees in Minnesota.  Frank was never tried for that crime, a cold-blooded murder for which he rightfully deserved to hang.  He passed away in 1915.

Time has been kind to the James gang.  Legend has made them into some sort of nineteenth century Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor though only the first part of that phrase was true.  The only poor that benefited from their robberies were themselves.  They wanted to portray themselves as robbers only, not the murderers they really were.  They would claim that anyone who happened to get killed during their exploits was shot in self-defense.  Not only were they murderers, but they were also pathological liars.  They didn’t give a wit about anyone but themselves.  Jesse, in particular, grew more paranoid toward the end and consequently more dangerous having murdered at least one of the members of his gang.

As gangs went, the James gang was about as successful as any during their time, always staying one or two steps ahead of the law.  Northfield proved to be their downfall, a friendly, peaceful town that wasn’t as hospitable as a group of murderous thieves expected.

Jesse James