“Still. It’s not like you’ve got two million names you can snatch out of a sock whenever you need a third man. I mean, who else is there that isn’t already in jail?”
Jesse sighed and said, “You’re going to try and wear me down on this, aren’t you.”
Charley smiled. “That was my main intention,” he said, and went on to cite his brother’s constancy and his acquaintance with the Jameses, his many attainments and capabilities, his unqualified allegiance and courage, and eventually Jesse said Bob could come along as soon as they’d settled on a situation and a gratifying corporation to rob.
And with that he lost his audience. Charley looked to his left and saw that Jesse had peeled off and was maneuvering through clusters of hickories and hackberries, so that pickets of him appeared vividly against the snow, then vanished into gray air and deep brown trees where branches snapped sharply and shrieked off his coat. Charley wasn’t sure if it was Jesse he was pursuing or if he himself were not being pursued. Then he caught a fuller glimpse and nudged his horse to catch up and after some time he reached Jesse at a creek that was arrested in amber ice and partially covered by snow.
Jesse leaned in his saddle, his arms crossed on the pommel, and considered the small, three-dashed tracks that arrowed across the snow. He winked and said, “I see our supper.”
“Rabbits,” said Charley Ford.
A NOTE WAS MAILED to Bob Ford with the news that Charley and Jesse would come to Ray County within the next few weeks. Martha collected the letter at the post office and sent word of it to Commissioner Craig in Kansas City because, as a precaution against any slip-up or vendetta, Craig had moved Bob to a room over the National Bank on the corner of Fifth and Delaware streets, and had moved Dick Liddil to Sheriff Timberlake’s house in Liberty, Missouri.
Bob Ford would later be cross-examined repeatedly about Craig’s instructions to him and he never swerved in his recollection: that the commissioner enjoined him to return to Elias’s small cottage in Richmond to await the arrival of the two, that Bob was told to communicate their whereabouts to Sheriff Timberlake via William Ford, Bob’s uncle, or his brother Elias (who was a secretly sworn deputy then, on the lookout for Jim Cummins or Frank James), and furthermore if Craig did not receive word from Bob within ten days after Martha reported him gone, the government would consider the Ford brothers already slain and would move against Jesse without regard for their safety.
Craig said all that in a stoic, lawyerly, teacherly way, as if making simple calculations or performing a regular task that was then no more than routine. Bob accepted the counsel as an ignorant boy would, nodding general agreement at every phrase, veering his eyes toward a noise in the street, anticipating the conclusion to each sentence without fully appreciating the contents. Then he left Kansas City and spent two or three weeks with Elias in Richmond, where he showed uncommon industry by clerking in the grocery store.
Sheriff Timberlake prowled the store once, priced a tin of tooth-powder, and then slipped into the storeroom and made a cigarette, smoking patiently until Bob could join him.
When he could get away from the grocery buyers, Bob said, “Haven’t seen any sign of him.”
“Do you know where he’s living?”
“No.”
The sheriff sighed and gazed at a box containing Baker’s Breakfast Cocoa. “I can’t guess how he does it, but he’s always knowledgeable about what’s going on. He’ll know you’ve been with me. You ought to take that for granted. And he’ll kill you if he gets the chance.”
Bob scratched at his neck and slid his eyes away.
The sheriff asked, “You willing to risk that?”
Bob jiggled his head in agreement and then said, “Yes, I am.” He fastened his eyes on Timberlake and it was as if a shade had been drawn over the boy’s face: gone were Bob’s ingratiation and ingenuousness; all the sheriff could see was longing and misery. Bob said, “I’ve been a nobody all my life. I was the baby; I was the one people picked on, the one they made promises to that they never kept. And ever since I can recall it, Jesse James has been big as a tree. I’m prepared for this, Jim. And I’m going to accomplish it. I know I won’t get but this one opportunity and you can bet your life I’m not going to spoil it.”
Sheriff Timberlake winced from cigarette smoke and edged away. “Capture him if you can when he first comes to meet you. If you can’t do it, wait for your chance. Don’t allow yourself to be found alone with him if you can avoid it. And don’t let him get behind you.” The sheriff then ground out his cigarette and exited through the loading door.
Bob remained standing there and then kicked a cardboard box many times and fell down to his knees.
Meanwhile Jesse and Charley meandered, riding eighty miles per day for weeks at a time. On March 8th a newspaper reported that Jesse James was “shot full of holes” in a skirmish at a log cabin in Kansas. The man with him was said to be Ed Miller. Seven deputies were killed, the writer claimed, “in the enterprise of capturing the desperado.” The notice was recanted within the day, but not before one-eyed George Shepherd took exception to it. He immediately wrote a letter to the newspaper in which he jeered at every official pronouncement about the gang and every incompetent posse that went out after them, concluding, “I am of the opinion that there are hu
ndreds of officers and detectives today hunting for the James boys and praying to God not to find them.”
A man who was retired from the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad maintained that he saw Jesse and another man in Lincoln, Nebraska, around this time, but a mill worker claimed they bought flour from him in Memphis, and there were occasional other reports of Jesse’s being sighted in Texas, Colorado, and the South; but he was actually spending the greater portion of his time in St. Joseph: Zee was pregnant once again and he sought to spare her the drudge work of keeping the cottage.
On March 17th, Jesse curried a stallion named Stonewall, braided green ribbons into its mane and tail, and rode magisterially in the St. Patrick’s Day parade with St. Joseph’s many cattlemen. He raised a broad white hat to the ladies, he cast rock candies to the children, he carried on like an army general or someone running for election, and yet no sheriff or Pinkerton operative recognized the outlaw, which may have been a disappointment to him.
It was also in March that Jesse and Charley visited Maryville and ordered steamed beer in Mike Hilgert’s saloon. A big, cruel, irascible man named Omaha Charlie—who would later be hanged with great enthusiasm from a railroad trestle for murder—moved about the saloon, noisily inviting various customers to play pool. He finally approached the newcomers, Jesse accepted the invitation, and Omaha Charlie immediately commenced insulting him for the swank of his clothes, his gentleman’s bearing, his high voice, the scrupulous method with which Jesse chalked his warped cue.
Jesse ignored the man and bent to the pool game with good humor, sinking five stripes in two turns, which caused Omaha Charlie to squinch up his eyes and call Jesse a cheat (according to plan) and tilt toward the stranger with his pool cue raised.
Eyewitnesses later recalled that the gentleman remained calm, almost pacific, but concentrated his cold blue eyes on Omaha Charlie and said with grave intention, “Stop where you are. You are threatening the wrong man.”
Omaha Charlie stalled for a minute and apprehensively reconsidered, then clapped the cue down on the pool table, slouched back to a corner chair, and occupied himself with his boot socks. Jesse James and Charley Ford merely lingered over their steamed beers, voted against inspecting the Maryville bank, and walked out.
Mike Hilgert then winked and called to the corner, “What made you so sociable all of a sudden?”
Omaha Charlie angrily removed himself from the saloon but reportedly said later, “I could see Hell in that man’s eyes.”
In Graham, Missouri, Jesse asked a blacksmith to renail a shoe, thawed his knuckles at a fire, and only then noticed that the man in the leather apron was Uriah Bond, whose son John was in grammar school with the James brothers in the late 1850s, then joined the Northern Army and was murdered by Jesse in the Civil War.