Northfield (3 page)

C
HAPTER
T
HREE
C
LELL
M
ILLER

“You-all suggested this,” Cole told Frank and Dingus. “I didn’t want a damned thing to do with it. I’m just going along with you.”

“Ain’t no gun to your head, Bud, so you can back out now,” Dingus fired back, but Cole just shaken his head—kinda sad, it struck me.

“No,” he said. “I….” But he didn’t finish, not that it mattered none because I don’t think nobody heard him, nobody but me, being closest to him that evening.

We was a-hiding out in the barn on the James farm till full dark. After Dingus and Cole had their little rumpus, Ma James come in. Ma James— though she had married a couple of times since Dingus and Frank’s pa got called to Glory by fever in California and now went by the name Samuel, and she wasn’t my mama, I still called her Ma James—was a-making a pretense to go milk the cow, in case any laws was in the woods, but really she just wanted to kiss her boys good bye and give us some corn dodgers and cold ham for the road. She was a big woman, right tough. Hell, I’d bet on her in a fight against a man twice her size even if those damned Pinkertons blowed off her arm and kilt her simple-minded boy back in ’75. But she loved Dingus and Frank dearly.

From an oaken bucket, she pulled out the hidden wheat sack holding the grub and passed it to Bob Younger, then I set my pipe down and taken the bucket, a-tipping my hat and a-saying how I’d milk that sorry cow for her. That’s what I done, too—let her have a little bit of private tenderness with her two sons. When I was just about done with the milking, she come over and put her hand on my shoulder.

“You’re a good boy, Clell Miller,” she told me. “I’m trustin’ you to take care of my sons. I know you’ll look after ’em. You and Bud. But I ain’t trustin’ that damyankee.” She jutted her chin over toward the maw-mouth who called hisself Chadwell. Never seen a body with so many teeth crammed into his mouth. Now, personally, I figured Chadwell, or Stiles, or whatever his real name was, he was a good egg, but I ain’t one to contradict Ma James, not by a damned sight, so I just nodded and give her the milk to haul back to the house.

I tried to think of something funny to say, but, instead, turned serious. “I love Jesse like he was my own brother,” I told her, “maybe more.” After she kissed my cheek, I offered her a pinch of snuff, which she taken.

Wasn’t no fib, neither. I thought highly of Dingus. He liked a good joke, same as me. Way I see things, Dingus and me, and Frank, Cole, and the boys, I felt closer to them than my blood kin. Hell, Dingus and me was blood kin. Baptized by the blood of the Confederacy. We’d been together since we robbed the Corydon bank about four years ago, but I had known them during the war.

Folks say the war ended more than a decade ago, but don’t hold no truck with that balderdash. No, sir. I was there when Bloody Bill got kilt over in Ray County, and I heard what they done to his body, them damyankee bastards. Cut off his head, they did, put it on a telegraph pole, drug the rest of his body through the streets of Richmond, didn’t even give him no fitting Christian burial after they was done with their pleasures. Them same Yanks locked me up in a prison, left me there to rot. Reckon they would have, too, if I hadn’t told them I was a loyal Union boy—reckon that was one of my best jokes—and my pa, Moses, he swore on a stack of Bibles that Bloody Bill had kidnapped me, that I had been true to the blue during the entire rebellion. They believed him, because Pa had taken the damned oath hisself, and he sobbed like a gal when he found me in that jail, Yankees just a-hankering to hang me. Reckon they would have kilt me but for my tender age, and ’twas by God’s grace that they spared me after they kilt poor Bill. I was only fourteen that October. Still, they didn’t let me out of that privy of a jail till April once word came that Bobby Lee had given up the fight, and only then after Pa had gotten some high-ranking Yanks to speak on my behalf.

Yet I ain’t one to quit no fight once I’ve started the ball. Folks call me fun-loving, but not when there comes a ruction. Hell, I had rode with Bloody Bill, Arch Clements, and the boys. Enjoyed it, and later I got pleasure a-keeping the fight alive, a-robbing banks and trains with Dingus. Sure beat a-sweating on that Gentry County farm with my younger brothers.

I come of age riding with Bloody Bill. That’s where I met up with Dingus. Hell, I was there when we give him that name.

He wasn’t much older than me when we met, near Plattsburg, him a-cleaning this old Colt’s Dragoon when it went off, as them old horse pistols be prone to do, and taken off the tip of his middle finger on his left hand. “That’s the dodd-dingus pistol I ever saw!” he snapped, dodd-dingus being something he could say whereas Ma James would have nailed his hide to the barn for a sacrilegious god-dangedest. We got a good chuckle at that, and, afterward, all the boys called him Dingus.

Yet after such an auspicious beginning, Dingus sure proved hisself a soldier to the cause, and I grew to respect and admire him, so when he propositioned me with this plan to ride up to Minnesota, well, it didn’t take much propositioning. I’d done all right with him since Corydon, was plumb proud to be in the company of a man like Jesse James. And, since I’m a-being all truthful here, I was right ready to get out of Missouri by the summer of ’76. Reckoned things would be a mite quieter for us amongst the Philistines than at home with the Midianites amongst us.

“It’s time,” Frank announced an hour or so after Ma James had gone back to her house, and we crawled into the back of a buckboard with our dusters and saddles and gear and such. Dingus, Frank, and Chadwell covered us up with a canvas tarp, then Frank called out to their nigger boy: “Perry, you may open the door!”

The James boys mounted their horses, Chad-well climbed up onto the buckboard driver’s bench, released the brake, and once Perry Samuel, who had been a-keeping a eye on things outside, had the doors flung wide, we left the farm afore the moon rose.

That’s how our little adventure to Minnesota begun.

We had met at the farm one last time, to see if anybody wanted to turn yeller and quit the job, but nobody did. Cole had his little say, that he wasn’t for this plan, no, sirree, Bob, and that it was mighty poor judgment to be at the James farm when half the laws in Missouri was after us, and we bickered a mite, but we was all in this together. Frank and Dingus wanted to ride their own horses all the way north, but Cole called that pure folly even though Frank said he had just bought a mighty fine dun horse over in Kansas City and he wasn’t about to trust no plug mule they’d get in Minnesota, and Cole allowed the dun had a lot of heart and bottom but he hisself was too damned old to ride 400 miles to Minneapolis. And Frank, he just grinned and said: “Bud, it’s closer nigh to five hundred miles to Texas, and you never complained about your ass all the times we rode down there.”

“Well, the rails suit me now,” Cole said.

“You might regret that come September,” Dingus said, “when you’re trusting a Northern horse to get out of a fix.”

“I thought you said there wouldn’t be no fix, Dingus.” Cole’s temper started a-festering again, but before they could commence a-fighting, Chad-well, he said horses wouldn’t be no problem at all up yonder. Jesse then said he’d ride his own damned mount anyhow, and Bob Younger didn’t know what to say or do, just kept a-whipping his head toward Dingus and then Cole and back again. So the argument went ’round and ’round till Ma James come in to say her fare-thee-wells.

Anyway, how things turned out was we rode out of the farm that night in a wagon and, with Frank and Dingus on their horses, rode on till dawn and then some, off the big roads, all the way to Council Bluffs. Frank, he wanted to go see his honey, as pretty a thing as they come, over in Omaha, so he left. Dingus and Chadwell rode out, too, said they’d rendezvous with Frank that night. Rest of us would catch a train, us decked out in our finest business suits we bought from our Rocky Cut takings, and we’d meet up at Albert Lea.

“Who’s Albert Lea?” I asked before we split up at Council Bluffs.

“Not a who,” Chadwell barked back, not a-knowing that I was just a-making a joke. “It’s a town. They got a good livery there.”

I taken out my pipe and whistled. “Now, that’s something a body should aspire to. I’d like to have a town named after me…a big town with a fine livery. McClelland Miller, Missouri. Kinda catchy, don’t you think?”

Only Jim Younger thought I was funny, but that was all right. We shaken hands, Dingus rode off with Chadwell, a-leaving us near the depot. So as not to draw much attention to ourselves, the rest of us separated. Bob Younger and Charlie Pitts found a hotel, Cole wandered over to the wagon yard by hisself, and Jim and I headed to the man and bought ourselves tickets to Albert Lea. Train would be along in an hour, the fellow told us, so we just waited on the bench, sharing an airtight of peaches. Rest of us train riders would probably follow the next day or thereabouts.

“You know what?” I asked Jim while a-rolling up my ticket stub and a-pushing it through one of the bullet holes in my hat.

“What’s that, Clell?”

“I’m a-thinking this’ll be the first train I ever rode that we wasn’t gonna rob.”

Jim chuckled a mite over that one, then flicked a finger out at my plug hat.

“You might want to consider buying yourself a new hat, Clell.”

“I like this one.”

“Those three holes might draw unwarranted attention.”

“Damn’ right,” I said. “It’ll show them Yanks what a good pistol fighter can do.” I held out that hat for Jim’s inspection because you could cover them holes with a dollar coin.

“That speaks highly of the man doing the shooting.”

“Damn’ right,” I said again. “I done it. Didn’t I tell you about it? Naw, I reckon that was Dingus I told.”

So I up and retold the story. I’d been at Uncle Bill’s after Rocky Cut, went upstairs, hung my hat on the bedpost, and turned in. Long about three o’clock, I waken up, but still half asleep, and I see this figure, mostly shadow, and, hell, got spooked that it’s some law dog. Now I admit that earlier Uncle Bill and me had shared some “nockum stiff” he had brewed. Anyhow, I rolled over, a-pretending I’m still asleep, ripped my Remington from underneath the pillow, and put three bullets into that law’s head. Quick as you please, I’m a-hitching up my trousers and a-trying to find my boots when Uncle Bill come a-barging in, just a-blasting me for being a damned fool a-waking up the family and all. That’s when I realized I had just kilt my hat.

Done with my tale, Jim drained the peach juice and tossed the empty tin in a trash box. “I left California to put my life in the hands of Dingus, who blew off the tip of his finger, and you, who shot your own hat.” He taken off his hat and run his fingers through his hair. “It’s a wonder I ain’t been killed yet.”

I laughed at that one, stretched out my boots, and waited for the train.

Minnesota was a mite cooler than I had expected, but I warrant hell’s cooler than Missouri in August. Albert Lea seemed to be a pretty fancy city, too, and we lugged our saddles and tack over to this big old brick building called City Livery, Feed & Sale Stable over on Broadway and Clark.

Chadwell, he hadn’t told no stretchers when he spoke highly of Minnesota horseflesh. We hadn’t been there five minutes before Jim taken a fancy to a blood bay thoroughbred.

“You gentlemen want reliable horses, you’ve come to the right place. Name’s Hall.” We turned from the stallion and shaken hands with a balding feller in a green and black checkered suit, giving him a couple of aliases.

“Fancy rigs.” Mr. Hall nodded at our saddles.

“I like to be comfortable,” Jim said, “when purchasing grain all over Freeborn County.”

“You two gents dealers?”

Nosy fellow, I thought, but allowed Jim to palaver with him.

“Out of Chicago. Just got into town. My partner and I, newly employed with Abbott Flour, will be visiting farms throughout the county You might be able to guide us in the right direction.”

“Might,” Mr. Hall said.

“And you might also be able to give us your rock-bottom price on that sore-legged piece of glue bait.” He tilted his head at the thoroughbred.

Mr. Hall, he let out a belly laugh. “You sure you’re not a horse trader?”

Jim give him an easy smile. “I’m a speculator, Friend Hall, in many things.”

“Well, why don’t you speculate on this…you won’t find a better horse between Duluth and Omaha. If you want something sore-legged or bound for the glue factory, I’ll direct you to Balch’s Wagon Shop. A.J. doesn’t do much horse trading, but, on occasion, someone swindles him with a lame horse. But this prime example of horseflesh, well, he’s only four years old and I wouldn’t lead him down the ramp for anything short of two hundred dollars.”

“That’s funny,” Jim said, “I was thinking more along the lines of fourteen years and twenty dollars.”

Well, that’s how things went. Jim Younger, he knew horses, but so did that Mr. Hall, and they wound up agreeing on $110. Over the next three days, we bought eight horses, three good ones plus the fine blood bay, along with four others we figured we’d do some trading for. Me and Jim also bought a spring wagon from a Dutchy named Drommerhausen at a carriage shop over on Clark Street, a-putting two of Mr. Hall’s least reliable horses in harness.

By and by, the boys come along and joined up with us—Cole first, then Charlie Pitts and Bob Younger, finally Chadwell, Frank, and Dingus. We scouted about around Freeborn County, over around Mansfield Township. Albert Lea was right close to the Iowa border, but the bank didn’t look fat with cash, and, besides, wasn’t many of us so jo-fired to rob a bank right at the get-go, Jim and Cole a-being the exceptions. Dingus, he wanted to do some consorting in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but Frank deemed it wise to get these “reliable” Albert Lea horses accustomed to our ways before a-getting too comfortable in Minnesota.

It always amuses me when I read them newspaper articles about us bushwhackers or hear paper-collar men speculate on us outlaws at some tonsorial parlor. Lots of folk figured it was Frank James who called all the shots, others said Cole Younger could lead a handful of men through the gates of Hades, but most believed Dingus to be leader of the gang.