The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (21 page)

“And I didn’t want you going into hysterics and saying more than you should to the wrong people,” Zerelda countered.

As if I hadn’t been born with sense. “Has there been no word from them?” I asked Annie.

“No good or bad news,” Zerelda said. “Some of these stories
. . .
” She indicated the pile of papers on the table, “declare some of the men are badly wounded. Others tell of stolen horses and encounters with desperate, armed men. But we all know what fantasies these reporters will create and call news.”

I nodded, recalling the wild tales that had circulated after the bombing of this house. “What do we do now?” I asked.

“We wait,” Zerelda said. “If I were a young man, I’d mount a horse and ride off to find them, but I’m not and I can’t, so we’re forced to wait. But my boys will come home. A little dust-up like this won’t stop a James. They won’t let me down.”

Let
her
down? As if she was the only one who mattered to her sons. “If there’s any way possible, Jesse will come home to
me
and to his son,” I said. “He won’t forsake his family.”

Zerelda’s lips thinned, and two spots of color formed high on her cheeks. “
I
am Jesse’s family,” she said.

“Arguing won’t bring them home,” Annie said. “All we can do is pray.” She squeezed my hand again. “We pray for their safety.”

Never had days stretched so long as the ones that passed during that dreadful time. We were certain the house was watched, though unlike the lawmen who had converged on us after the Pinkerton bombing, the current deputies were more circumspect. We knew Jesse and Frank wouldn’t risk returning to the house unless they were certain they could slip in safely. Meanwhile, Ambrose and Reuben made regular rides into the countryside under cover of darkness, visiting places they thought Jesse and Frank might hide, but never finding any signs they had been there. Meals were tense interludes during which we picked at our food and shared theories about where the men might be now and what they were doing.

This home, which had once been so forbidding and unwelcoming to me, now became my refuge. Here were people who shared my misery, who understood my longing, who needed my company as much as I needed theirs. In our love and longing for the safety of the same men, Zerelda and Annie and I drew closer. In praying and waiting and hoping we became a team—a family unlike any I had ever known.

I seldom ventured far from the farm, but one afternoon not long after I’d arrived, Annie needed some oil of cloves to soothe a toothache. Ambrose and Reuben were busy with a cow who was having a difficult birth. Annie agreed to watch Tim for me if I would go into town for the clove oil.

I was just leaving the pharmacy with my purchase when a tall, dark-haired man blocked my passage along the boardwalk. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, removing a light tan Stetson. “Are you Mrs. James?”

I looked him in the eye, but didn’t answer. To locals, it was no secret that I’d married Jesse James, but this man was a stranger to me. He was handsome, clean-shaven with eyes so brown they were almost black. But he wore a silver star over the left breast pocket of his shirt, and for me that definitely detracted from his looks. “Please move aside and let me pass,” I said.

“I realize we haven’t been introduced, but a couple of people pointed you out to me and indicated you are Jesse James’s wife.”

Still, I said nothing. If he knew the truth, he had no need for me to confirm it.

“I must say, it surprised me at first,” he said. “When they pointed you out, I mean. I’d heard Jesse was married, but I wasn’t expecting his wife would be such a lady. And such a pretty one.”

If he expected me to soften at his compliments, he was doomed to disappointment. “I really must go,” I said, and tried to move past him.

But the walkway was narrow, and he deftly moved to block my passage around him. “I just wanted to ask you one question,” he said. “Why would a pretty, respectable woman such as yourself even want to associate with a man like Jesse James?”

I should have kept silent and not let him bait me, but the implication that Jesse was some kind of monster who didn’t deserve a woman such as myself angered me. “Have you ever met Jesse James?” I asked. “Do you know him?”

“No ma’am. But I know what he’s done, and it’s not the work of a good man.”

“You know stories,” I said. “Things others say about him, but you don’t know Jesse. He’s as good a husband and father, as true a son and loyal a friend as any you’ll ever meet. He’s generous and loving and nothing like the criminal who’s been portrayed in some papers.”

The deputy’s frown deepened, furrows forming on his forehead and either side of his mouth. I’d thought him handsome, but I didn’t think that anymore. “What do you say to the charge that he murdered innocent people?” he asked.

“You wear a gun, sir. Have you never killed anyone with it?”

My question seemed to startle him. He blinked. “Only when I had to, ma’am.”

“And yet no one calls you a murderer.”

“I’m sworn to uphold the law, not break it.”

“Laws are made for the advantage of those in power to oppress those without power.” It was something I had heard Frank say one time. I didn’t really believe it. Without laws, some people might feel free to kill anyone they disagreed with. But it sounded like a good argument to hurl back at this nosy lawman. “And now I really
do
have to go,” I insisted, and shoved past him. Let him come after me if he felt he must, but I wouldn’t stand there and let him interrogate me any longer.

I was out of breath by the time I reached the outskirts of town, having walked as fast as I was able away from the lawman. I slowed and massaged the stitch in my side, and looked back over my shoulder. The road was empty, and I breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

But the encounter with the lawman continued to haunt me. No doubt he had intended eventually to question me as to my knowledge of Jesse’s activities or whereabouts. That didn’t upset me as much as his judgment of Jesse did. What was it about Jesse that caused strangers to choose their preferred version of him? Some, like the boy on the train, saw him as a hero, while men like the deputy painted him as the worst sort of demon. The press didn’t help with their sensationalist reports of every rumor surrounding the James brothers. The president himself didn’t garner so much coverage in the papers, at least in Missouri.

Whatever the reason for the public’s views of Jesse, I hated to see him so misjudged. The man I knew was neither devil nor angel. He was a special man, to be certain, but the qualities that endeared him to me were apparently hidden to most others. I knew Jesse’s kindness and caring, and his deep, abiding love for me. I saw the vulnerability of the boy he had been and the man he was. I had seen the strength of his convictions and felt the depth of his sorrow at the loss of his brother and the injury to his mother. I knew the gentleness with which he held his child, and the passion with which he expressed his love for me.

Jesse had made me the woman I was today. If not for him, I would be some unhappy farmer’s wife, condemned to always struggle to reconcile the dutiful role society had dictated for me and the private rebellions of my heart. Only with Jesse was I free to be myself, rebellions and sins and all. He loved me despite of and because of my flaws and foibles, and understood me as no one else ever could.

Those of us who lived
now at the Samuels’ farm carried out a daily ritual. Ambrose rose early and rode into town to meet the first train, and collected as many different newspapers as were available. We would begin reading them over breakfast and continue through the morning, drinking cup and after cup of milky coffee and sweet herb tea and debating the merits of this story or that.

“This story says two boys were plowing a field when six men in rubber coats accosted them.” Annie indicated an article in the paper she was reading one morning. “The men took the horses at gunpoint, and forced the boys to guide them into the woods. They said one of the men was heavily bandaged and feverish.”

“This story says three hundred men have rallied to the pursuit.” I scanned another article. “It also says it’s rained every day since the bank robbery.” I closed my eyes, swallowing tears as I thought of Jesse, cold and hungry and possibly hurt, slogging through rain. He wasn’t in the woods of Missouri or Kansas, territory he knew well, but in a strange northern land far from home, with hundreds of men pursuing him, like hounds determined to run a fox to ground.

Later reports that reached our ears indicated the six outlaws were on foot, having abandoned their horses. Zerelda scoffed at this idea. “My boys would never walk when they could ride!”

The men were said to be hungry, stealing food to survive—cabbages and corn from fields they passed through, and the occasional chicken. I could scarcely force food down my own throat as I thought of Jesse starving in some field somewhere.

September 21, when I had been at the Samuels’ farm for a week, two weeks after the raid on the Northfield bank, lawmen cornered Cole, Bob and Jim Younger and Charlie Pitts in a farmer’s field near Madelia, Minnesota. In the gun battle that followed, Pitts was killed and the three Youngers badly wounded. Out of options, the Youngers surrendered and were hauled off to jail.

I read this account with my heart in my throat, then looked across the breakfast table at my fellow sufferers. I knew we were all thinking the same thing, but Zerelda was the only one brave enough to say it out loud. “Where are Frank and Jesse?” She pounded the table with her fist, making the silverware jump. “What has become of my boys?”

We sent Ambrose to the depot for papers twice a day now. The reporters fell silent on the subject of Frank and Jesse, but we had an answer soon enough. Two days after the news broke of the capture of the Youngers, a posse approached the farm, calling for the surrender of Frank and Jesse. They were answered with a hail of bullets, and forced to withdraw. But the encounter made Zerelda almost giddy. “If they’re looking for them here, that means they haven’t found them elsewhere,” she crowed.

The law was still hunting Jesse and Frank, but they had no proof to tie them to any crime. When Cole Younger was asked to reveal the identity of his two accomplices, his answer was a note, handed to his jailers.
Be true to your friends if the Heavens fall.

I thought of the handsome young man who had asked me to dance that long-ago day at my sister’s wedding, and sent up a prayer for his protection. I had not fallen in love with Cole, but the man I did love couldn’t have asked for a better friend, and I hoped Cole wouldn’t suffer too much because of that friendship.

If it is possible to live on hope alone,
then that is what I did in those two weeks with the other women at the farmhouse. And I think it must be some of what kept Jesse going across hundreds of miles of hostile territory. The hope of warmth and food and safety. The hope of seeing home and family once more.

Only later did we learn that, having separated from the rest of the group, Frank and Jesse stole a pair of horses from a farmer’s barn. They found kind folks who fed them and gave them a change of clothes. They forded rivers, crossed fields, and rode by moonlight to avoid discovery. They made it to Dakota Territory, then on to Iowa, and finally to Missouri.

They returned to the farm late one night at the end of the month. The pickets the Samuels had posted spotted them first, and sent word to the house. Perry, now seven, was sent to wake me, though he didn’t tell me why. Pulling on a dress, I hurried into the front room, where a sight from my dreams—or my nightmares—greeted me.

Frank sat on the settee, his coat off, his trousers sliced open to the knee, revealing an ugly wound, which Dr. Samuel knelt before him to dress. Annie sat beside him, holding his hand and stroking his arm.

Jesse sprawled in a chair nearby, as filthy and thin as his brother, but seemingly unharmed. He looked up when I entered, and smiled broadly, though the happiness in that smile didn’t reach all the way to his eyes. His gaze as it met mine spoke of weariness and unutterable suffering.

I ran to him and collapsed onto the floor beside him, throwing my arms around him. He was painfully thin, and filthy, his hair matted, his beard a thick tangle. I was reminded of the boy who had been brought to my parents’ parlor all those years ago. He had not been expected to live then, and he had. He had not been expected to escape Northfield, either, yet he had. He was beaten, but not defeated, bent but not broken.