A policeman returned from the cottage with clean clothes for Charley, a gray tweed suit for Bob, and after they’d washed and changed, the Fords were issued shotguns for a short walk under rain-lashed umbrellas to the Buchanan County Courthouse.
The circuit courtroom was on the second floor and was already more jam-packed than an immigrant ship, with pallid women in the pews and children squeezed between the balusters of the bar and boys piggy-backed on their fathers’ shoulders. Sitting in the aisles and pushing down the alleys and shoving into every cranny were correspondents from all the closer towns, shopkeepers with aprons on under their sweaters, intimidatingly mustached businessmen in nearly synonymous suits and slickers, farmers with droopy hats and fierce-looking beards, everyone staring as six policemen and the Ford brothers strode to the reserved seats on the defendant’s side, their bootheels clobbering the oak wood flooring, their suit coats stuffed behind their pistol grips.
Mrs. Zee James was sitting with Marshal Enos Craig on the plaintiff’s side, wearing a black silk dress and dark brown veil; in the second row was Henry Craig with a yellow legal pad on his knee, his round spectacles far down his nose. He gave Bob just a glimmer of a smile and then found justification to make some sort of notation. Bob crouched forward and saw that Zee was crying, he saw the prosecuting attorney instructing Coroner Heddens at the clerk’s table, he looked around the room. People began making comments on his attractiveness, expressing surprise at his slightness and age, gossiping about his peccancy, sending him looks of scorn; but Bob governed his own emotions, reading his fingers as Coroner Heddens and a jury of six men came in from the judge’s antechambers and a bailiff announced the inquisition was in session.
Charles Wilson Ford was the first witness called to the stand. He testified that he was twenty-four years old and in residence on the Ray County farm of Mrs. Martha Ford Bolton when he first made the acquaintance of Jesse James in 1879. He said, “He was a sporting man and so was I. He gambled and drank a little, and so did I.” Charley claimed he’d never stolen anything with the James gang, but most of his further statements were true. His lisp was not much noticed. Rain fell straight as fishing line outside and gradually cooled the courtroom. Heddens asked if Bob came to St. Joseph to assist in robbing a bank and Charley apprised the coroner of their plans for a Platte City attempt. “Jesse said they were going to have a murder trial there this week, and while everybody would be at the courthouse, he would slip in and rob the bank, and if not he would come back to Forrest City and get that.”
The coroner stood near the plaintiff’s table with his hands in his pockets. He was unpracticed at cross-examination and all too aware of the many attorneys observing his performance. He lamely asked, “What was your idea in that?”
Charley continued as if the man’s inquiry were logical and incisive. “It was simply to get Bob here where one of us could kill Jesse if once he took his pistols off. To try and do this with his pistols on would be useless, as I knew that Jesse had often said he would not surrender to a hundred men, and if three men should step out in front of him and shoot him, he could kill them before he fell.”
O. M. Spencer was aghast when Dr. Heddens then released Charley without a more exacting interrogation but chose to let the matter rest until he could manage the questioning at the Ford brothers’ trial. Charley swaggered back to the wooden chair and slouched down in it so that all the eyes would be off him.
Bob said, “You did fine,” and Coroner Heddens called Robert Newton Ford to the stand.
People strained their necks and rose from their seats and jumped to see the shootist. He strode with confidence to the bailiff, calmly swore not to perjure, and then complacently revealed himself to the courtroom audience, smiling with arrogance and gladness. He was twenty years old but looked sixteen. His gray suit was new, he seemed exceptionally well groomed, his short brown hair was soft as a child’s. He was very slim but sinewy, with stark bones that seemed as slender and hard as the spindle struts on a chair. His facial features were refined, his complexion was flawless and without color (sunburn was then tantamount to dirt), and except for something cruel about his mouth Bob Ford might have been thought rather pretty.
The coroner commenced his easy catechism and Bob answered with a voice that was authoritarian and certain, even haranguing in its tone. He presented a comparatively accurate narrative of the preceding four months, misspeaking some dates and making the ten-thousand-dollar reward seem his only motive for the murder.
Heddens asked, “What have you been doing since you came here?”
“My brother and I go downtown sometimes at night and get the papers.”
“What did you tell Jesse you were with him for?”
“I told him I was going in with him.”
“Had you any plans to rob any bank?”
“He had spoken of several but made no particular selection.”
The coroner was a little confused about the variation from Charley’s statement about the Platte City Bank but went on. “Well, now will you give us the particulars of the killing and what time it occurred?”
“After breakfast, between eight and nine o’clock this morning, he, my brother, and myself were in the room. He pulled off his pistols and got up on a chair to dust off some picture frames and I drew my pistol and shot him.”
“How close were you to him?”
“About six feet away.”
“How close to him was the hand that held the pistol?”
Bob sent the coroner a reproachful look for the pointlessness of the question and said, “About four feet I should think.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He started to turn his head but didn’t say a word.”
“Was Jesse James unarmed when you killed him?”
“Yes, sir.”
The coroner gave Bob permission to step down and the court was adjourned until 10 a.m. on Tuesday. O. M. Spencer moaned.
Henry Craig said, “You’ll get your chance, Spencer,” and the two attorneys strolled to a restaurant in order to argue their strategies.
In the meantime, the Fords tardily returned to jail in a cold rain. A cluster of black umbrellas were raised over them by policemen and a crowd followed them with admiration, congratulations, catcalls, jeers, and surly looks. Sheriff James R. Timberlake rose from a chair when the two scurried inside. Door locks were thrown and the window shades were drawn as Timberlake walked the Fords back to their cell. He told them to make no agreements without consulting Henry Craig or William H. Wallace, to make no arrangement about an attorney since a good one was already considering the case, and to get their accounts of the assassination straightened out—according to the reporters he’d chatted with, there were too many inconsistencies; in some versions Charley was not even in the room when the shot was fired.
Bob Ford explained, “I was just having a little fun.”