The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Charley let his mare garden the brown weeds that stemmed above the snowcrust. “Somehow I never seen you as the proud owner of a cattle lot. This is going to take some adjusting on my part.”

Jesse scooped up snow and ate it and swatted his mittens as he arose, rejoicing over his prospects. But when they visited another property the next afternoon, Jesse was so wary he wore three revolvers under his Confederate officer’s long wool coat and knotted a blue scarf over his nose and mouth in order to remain incognito. Charley made conversation with the owner as they walked from room to room and saw the grange and barn and stables, but the man seemed either too inquisitive or too comprehending and Jesse trudged to his horse through the snow, leaving Charley to say goodbye and make apologies.

However, by March 2nd agriculture was on his mind and Jesse wrote, in his gnarled and negligent scrawl, this letter of inquiry to J. D. Calhoun of Lincoln, Nebraska:

Dear Sir:

I have noticed that you have 160 acres for sale in Franklin County, Neb. Please write me at once and let me know the lowest cash price that will buy your land. Give me a full description of the land, etc.

I want to purchase a farm of that size, provided I can find one to suit. I will not buy a farm unless the soil is No. 1.

I will start a trip in about 8 days to northern Kan & south Nebrask, and if the description of your land suits me I will buy it. From the advertisement in the Lincol Journal I suppose your land can be made a good farm for stock and grain.

Please answer at once.

Respectful

Tho Howard.

Then the spell apparently wore off because Calhoun received no acknowledgment of his reply.

Charley and Jesse visited Kansas City once at about this time and there Jesse called on Mattie Collins as Charley supported his weight on a pool cue in a smoky Twelfth Street saloon.

Much later, Mattie admitted to a “great fondness” for Jesse and said they “were in constant communication,” which prompted many rumors about a love affair between them, but it is just as likely Jesse visited her in hope of private intelligence rewarding Mattie with presents for whatever she volunteered. Years afterward, when it no longer mattered, Mattie would claim she couldn’t love another man, that she was married body and soul to Dick Liddil, and she’d further claim that she’d never told even one of Dick’s secrets, so it could be Jesse never received what he really wanted, which may have accounted for his tart gloominess and the sting of his words when he collected Charley at the saloon that night.

He was increasingly irritable and suspicious, and a cantankerous mood could fly over him as quickly as the shadow of a bird. But Jesse was neither close-mouthed nor sulky for long, and over the weeks that he and Charley were on the road, he unscrolled yarns and anecdotes that excited interest in Charley only insofar as they permitted him a corresponding reminiscence.

Jesse revealed that for two months one summer, using the alias of John Franklin, he conducted a singing school for the Unity Baptist Church in Calloway County. He said he once intended to steal a Lutheran minister’s cigar box of coins but learned the German’s salary was a mere two hundred dollars per year and Jesse returned the box, avowing, “I’m not as bad as some people think.”

He chronicled a visit to a chum named Scott Moore at the Las Vegas hot springs in the New Mexico Territory. Moore and his wife, Minnie, ran the Old Adobe Hotel there and served gigantic eight-course Sunday dinners that could beguile the gold right out of your teeth. It was there, in July 1879, that Je

sse was introduced to none other than Billy the Kid. Billy was slack-jawed and broad in the sitdown and the corners of his mouth collected white saliva when he talked, but he was otherwise an agreeable, generous boy who gloried in the coincidence that the two scariest men in America both wore left-handed guns. They buried him in leg-irons, Jesse said. His English was lazy, his Spanish exact, and Billy’s last words had been “Quién es?”—Who is it? “He was more sinned against man sinning,” said Jesse.

“Like you,” said Charley Ford.

He told Charley about the uncle for whom he was named, and how Jesse Cole had become overwrought by various illnesses and had therefore resolved to permanently end them. His uncle had walked out to a summer lawn, removed his coat and vest and rested a silver watch on them, and then grandiosely lay down, unbuttoned his shirt, and shot himself in the heart.

Jesse swiveled a little in his saddle to see Charley plodding his mare along to the right. “You ever consider suicide?”

“Can’t say I have. There was always something else I wanted to do. Or my predicaments changed or I saw hardships from a different slant; you know all what can happen. It never seemed respectable.”

“I’ll tell you one thing that’s certain: you won’t fight dying once you’ve peeked over to the other side; you’ll no more want to go back to your body than you’d want to spoon up your own puke.”

It was March then and the weather was nasty and the road was ice and muck and scrambled wagon ruts. Their saddles creaked with every movement and their two horses were morose: their nostrils were frosted and their manes were braided with icicles and if they rested the animals their coats would steam in the cold. Charley’s motor worked in the considerable silence between the two men and then he said, “Since we’re looking to robbing banks, I was wondering if I could go so far as to recommend we add another feller to the gang and sort of see if we couldn’t come out of our next job alive.”

Jesse seemed transfixed by his saddle’s left fender and stirrup, and would not raise his stare.

Charley went on, “Bob wanted to know at Christmas could he ride with us next time we took on a savings bank or a railroad.”

Jesse sneezed and then sneezed again and he scoured his nose with his yellow glove, examining the dark streak on the leather.

Charley said, “Bob isn’t much more than a boy to most appearances, but there’s about two tons of sand in him and he’ll stand with his shooter when that’s what’s called for. And he’s smart too—he’s about as intricate as they come.”

“You’re forgetting that I’ve already met the kid.”

“He surely thinks highly of you.”

“All America thinks highly of me.”