The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

“Ah, Charley’s brother.”

Bob received that as an invitation to lower his hands. His face creased with a wide smile that hung on as Frank stubbed his cigarette cold on a cottonwood trunk and returned to his inspection of the geography, disregarding Bob Ford.

The boy hunkered next to Frank and swatted his stovepipe hat around, dividing screens of mosquitoes and gnats that blew awry and rejoined and touched lighter than breath on his neck. He said, “I was lying when I said I just happened on down here. I’ve been on the scout, looking for you. I feel lousy that I didn’t say so at the outset.”

Frank dug in his pockets and extracted cigarette makings. He was not inclined to converse.

Bob scratched his hat-matted hair. “Folks sometimes take me for a nincompoop on account of the shabby first impression I make, whereas I’ve always thought of myself as being just a rung down from the James brothers. And, well, I was hoping if I ran into you aside from those peckerwoods, I could show you how special I am. I honestly believe I’m destined for great things, Mr. James. I’ve got qualities that don’t come shining through right at the outset, but give me a chance and I’ll get the job done—I can guarantee you that.”

Frank slimed the cigarette he’d made and struck a match off his boot sole. “You’re not so special, Mr. Ford.” He inhaled tobacco smoke and let it crawl from his mouth before he blew it. “You’re just like any other tyro who’s prinked himself up for an escapade; You’re hoping to be a gunslinger like those nickel books are about, but you may as well quench your mind of it. You don’t have the ingredients.”

“I’m sorry to hear you feel that way,” said Bob, “since I put such stock in your opinions.” He slapped a mosquito and looked at his blood-freckled palm and stood, rehatting his short, baby-fine hair. “As for me being a gunslinger, I’ve just got this one granddaddy Patterson Colt and a borrowed belt to stick it in. But I’ve also got an appetite for greater things. I hoped joining up with you would put me that much closer to getting them. And that’s the plain and simple truth of the matter.”

“So what do you want me to say?”

“You’ll let me be your sidekick tonight.”

“Sidekick?” said Frank. He’d heard the term applied solely to matched horses in a team-span.

“So you can see my grit and intelligence.”

Frank examined his cigarette, sucked it once more, and flipped it onto a roadbed tie where the butt was later shredded under a railroad detective’s laced shoe. He said, “I don’t know what it is about you, but the more you talk, the more you give me the willies. I don’t believe I even want you as close as earshot this evening.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Why don’t you go?” Frank said and the boy tramped up the hill, slapping weeds aside.

THE LATE CLELL MILLER’S kid brother Ed had imposed a large iron pot in the hoop of his saddle lariat, and he and Dick Liddil scrounged for wild onions and scarecrowed vegetables as Jesse gardened his rant into a second hour. He cut and rooted and cultivated until he’d worked on Shelby in the Civil War and the might of iron submarines and Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln’s hysterics. Often he was facetious, but no one adventured a smile until Jesse did. His audience varied according to jobs they were expected to perform—steeds needed tending, roads needed watching, rookies were bossed into cooking chores—and each vacated seat was bullied over as Jesse continued what he liked to call wabash.

His cousin Robert Woodson Hite remained on his left, sulking and mooning the afternoon through over some imagined slight. Next to Wood was his nineteen-year-old brother, Clarence, who was stooped and consumptive and slack-jawed, and as void of calculation as a sponge. Persevering too was Charley Ford, who snorkled mucus and spit it, who chuckled and hee-hawed soon after the others did, continuing on with his bray seconds after the others had ceased, and who covered his left boot with a corrupted coat in order to conceal a clubfoot that practiced walking had made practically imperceptible. He had abetted the ransacking of the express car on the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railway, which the James gang had boarded on July 15th, and gave accommodations to the outlaws afterward at his sister’s place near Richmond. So he was in good favor. His brother William had married the sister of Jim Cummins, which was how Charley was initially noticed, and he hunted pigeons and turtledoves with Ed Miller, who had recruited him into the James gang by introducing him to Jesse on a gambling night in 1879—he had impressed Jesse as a savvy, sporting man then; just how Charley never could fathom.

Charles Wilson Ford was a rail-thin, rough, and likeably ignorant country boy who apologized for his failings before they could be found out: there was something of a good-natured dog about him, something hungry and grateful and vulnerable that made up for his general vulgarity. His lackluster brown eyes were sunk in his skull and his right eye was slanted enough to look akilter and borrowed and slapdash. Mismatched also were his ears (the right appeared to have taken wing), and his teeth (his overbite made it seem as if he were incessantly sucking his lower lip). He had heavy black eyebrows and a black mustache no coarser than body hair, that never seemed more than a random smear of newsprint under his nose. His complexion was pestered with acne, his fingers often looked shoe-grimed, he spoke with a paltry lisp that somehow made him seem younger than twenty-four.

Jesse was on the subject of the first electric power plant, which Thomas A. Edison was constructing on Pearl Street in New York City. He explained, incorrectly, how the incandescent lamp worked, and Charley stabbed at the dirt with a stick or pinched scarlet eruptions on his shoulder and neck or measured the others with sidelong glances. Then a boy in a gray stovepipe hat emerged from the snaggles and claws of the woods and reached into the blue smoke of the fire and praised the miscellaneous stew and principally slouched about doing fraudulent chores in order to eavesdrop on Jesse. At last Clarence Hite relinquished his seat and the boy pushed John Bugler aside and capered over boots and legs and wormed down next to Charley Ford with the incivility and intrusion that bespoke brotherhood. The boy had been introduced to Jesse more than once but the outlaw saw no reason then to store the kid’s name, and now, as he culled a list that Frank had read aloud Monday night, he kept returning to the name Bunny. The boy nodded like a horse whenever Jesse’s words seemed to want affirmation; whenever Jesse leavened his chat with humor the younger Ford boy laughed overloudly and infectiously with whoops and idiotic rises, like a knuckle-run on a piano. His were the light-checkered blue eyes that never strayed, the ears that picked up each nuance and joke, the amen looks that suggested he understood Jesse as no one else could.

Frank returned from his reconnaissance and scowled at the loiterers even as he drank black coffee with a carefree Jim Cummins. Dick Liddil rattled a wooden kitchen tool around inside the iron pot and sang “Chowtime!” and the gang filed by the fire with invented spoons and bowls. The Ford boy was the last to get up, finding his legs only when Jesse stood and closing on him like a valet.

“Am I too late to wish you Happy Birthday?”

Jesse grinned. “How’d you know?”

Bob Ford ticked his head. “You’d be surprised at what I’ve got stored away. I’m an authority on the James boys.”

Jesse asked, “Your name isn’t Bunny Ford, is it?”

The boy was so avid to second whatever Jesse said that he nearly admitted it was, but checked himself and corrected, “Why no. It’s Robert Ford.”

“Of course it is.”

“Bob.”

Jesse simpered a little and walked to the fire; Bob sidled and hopped to keep in stride with him. Jesse said, “I don’t recollect: you’ve never been with the gang before, have you?”

“Oh no sirree. I’m a virgin.” Bob thumbed back his stovepipe hat and grinned just as Jesse might. “At least in that one respect, if you get my meaning.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been fretting and fidgeting like I had ants down my pants the entire afternoon. Your brother and I had a real nice visit over toward the railroad, chatting about this and that, enjoying each other’s company, but otherwise I’ve been organizing my mind and working at calming my innards.”