The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (38 page)

Jesse had not changed, but times had. Maybe the majority of people no longer saw the banks and railroads as enemies, but as the means for their own prosperity. The men interviewed in the newspapers seemed to see Jesse as stealing from
them
, and not some faceless corporation. His thefts benefitted no one but himself, and hurt the reputation of Missouri.

Though Jesse’s own cunning and luck had played a part in keeping him safe over the years, he primarily owed his life to the protection of friends and neighbors. If even one of them had turned on him, he would have been imprisoned—or worse—years before. By returning to Missouri, Jesse and Frank sought refuge in the country and with the people they knew best. But I wondered if in these changing times they could truly count on the loyalty of their countrymen.

On July 28, 1881, Governor Crittenden issued a proclamation offering a $10,000 reward each for the capture and conviction of Frank and Jesse James. A man could labor twenty years and not earn such a sum. With $10,000 he could buy a fine house, a new carriage and horses, jewelry and clothes and furniture of every kind, and still have money left over.

It was the kind of money that could turn a man’s head and make him question his loyalty to anyone.

While I worried about the price on Jesse’s head, he dismissed the sum with a shrug. “The money just shows how desperate they all are,” he said. “The railroads and the government men hate me because I make them look bad. All of them together haven’t been able to stop me before now, and a dollar sign on a wanted poster isn’t going to change that.”

If anything, Jesse enjoyed the new spotlight focused on him. He read the best articles from the papers out loud at the breakfast table, and laughed whenever a lawman was quoted as saying the James Gang would soon be apprehended.

True to her word, Annie did not leave Frank, but she could scarcely stand to be in the same room with Jesse. She clearly held him responsible for what she saw as her husband’s downfall. When she and Frank came to dinner the first week in September to celebrate Jesse’s thirty-fourth birthday, she sat as far from Jesse as possible and avoided looking at him.

“Frank says he’s only participating in the robberies because he’s worried about Jesse,” she whispered to me later, as we sat in the parlor sewing while the men smoked on the back porch. “He thinks Jesse needs his steadying hand along to prevent him from doing something foolish. I told him his brother was a grown man—let him be an idiot if he chooses. If he’s going to risk his life, there’s no reason Frank should do so.”

“Jesse is not an idiot,” I said sharply.

Her mouth tightened. “You can’t say he’s not being reckless,” she said. “Risking more than he ought. How much longer can he flaunt the law this way before all that reward money tempts someone to turn him in? And Frank has the same reward on his head—when all along, everything has been Jesse’s fault.”

I gave up the pretense of sewing and laid my needlework aside. “Frank is Jesse’s
older
brother,” I reminded her. “He joined the guerrillas first and Jesse followed. He was with Jesse at every robbery until after Northfield. Jesse didn’t lead him into anything. And wasn’t it you yourself who said Frank was the one who planned the robberies—that Frank was the one really responsible for their success?”

“Jesse takes advantage of Frank’s goodness,” she countered. “He knows how responsible Frank is. How he has such a strong sense of duty. Jesse can be as reckless as he wants, knowing Frank will be there to clean up after him.”

“That’s ridiculous! If Jesse wasn’t smart enough to plan everything out, there’s no telling what Frank would bumble into. It was Jesse who made friends with John Edwards and got the press on their side. And it was Jesse who helped a wounded Frank get home safely after the disaster at Northfield.”

“Jesse
planned
that fiasco at Northfield,” she snapped. “Frank never wanted to go up there. He only did it to try to protect his brother.” Her hands shook so much it took three tries to secure her knitting needles in a ball of yarn. She shoved the whole mess into her bag and stood. “I can see you’re as foolish as Jesse,” she said.

“I don’t call it foolish for a woman to defend her husband from ridiculous accusations.” I rose and faced her.

“The only thing ridiculous is how you’re still so besotted with the man after all these years. I’d think you’d have grown up enough to see him for the cruel, manipulative braggart he is.”

“How dare you say such things about my husband!”

“I’m only telling the truth!”

We had long since ceased whispering. Our shouts drew the men from the back steps. Frank rushed in, Jesse following. “What’s going on?” Frank demanded.

“Sounds to me like we’ve interrupted a good, old-fashioned cat fight.” Jesse leaned against the door jamb, a half-smile on his lips.

“What is this about?” Frank asked Annie.

She avoided meeting his gaze. “I’m ready to go home now,” she said. Without another word, she turned and walked out the front door.

Frank looked at me. “What were you two arguing about?” he asked.

I turned away. “It doesn’t matter. You’d better take her home.”

When Frank and Annie had gone, Jesse pulled me close. “Were you defending my honor?” he asked.

“You heard?”

“Enough to gather that Annie blames me for leading Buck astray.” He laughed. “Trust me, Buck never needed anyone to lead him into trouble. He always knows exactly what he’s about.”

“Do you know what you’re about?” I asked. “Committing these robberies when the government is making things so hot for you?”

“Now’s the perfect time to strike,” he said. “The banks and railroads think this reward has made them safe—that ordinary men would be driven into hiding. They forget that we aren’t ordinary men.”

“Oh, you aren’t, are you?”

He smoothed his hand down my backside and pulled me tight against him, pressing me into the hard ridge of his arousal. “I don’t feel very ordinary when I’m with you.” He kissed my temple, his lips resting over my steadily-beating pulse. “Are you still besotted with me, Zee?”

“Yes.” But my infatuation was tempered by the knowledge that I had aligned myself to a man I would never fully understand or control.

I took Jesse’s hand, and led him toward our bedroom. “Show me how extraordinary you are tonight,” I teased.

“An invitation I can’t refuse.”

I smiled, even as I blinked back tears. I was no longer a blind girl who believed love would solve all our problems and erase all our differences. From the early days of our love, Jesse had fascinated and excited me. Now at times he terrified me as well.

I knew Jesse would do things to hurt me, even when he didn’t mean to. I accepted that, even though I wished for a different kind of life. Loving Jesse came with a price I’d agreed to pay.

Two days later, Jesse and Frank stopped a Chicago and Alton train east of Independence Missouri, at a place called Blue Cut. They piled rocks and limbs on the track and signaled the locomotive to stop, then ransacked the express safe and robbed the passengers. According to newspaper reports, Jesse talked and joked with the passengers even as he relieved them of their valuables.

The robbery at Blue Cut took place five years to the day after the tragedy at Northfield. I wondered if this, more than concern for his brother or a desire for money, had persuaded Frank to come out of retirement. Was this Jesse and Frank’s way of redeeming that date—of proclaiming to the world that they remained undefeated and uncowed?

“Did you really tell them you intended to keep robbing trains all your life?” I asked Jesse a few days later, as we pored over reports of the hold-up. “And that you would do so even if they loaded the train with soldiers?”

“I wanted to send the message that I wasn’t afraid,” he said. “And that I had no intention of slowing down.”

But he was forced to slow down for a little while. Shortly after the Blue Cut raid, Frank and Annie announced they were moving east, to Baltimore. I don’t know what exactly precipitated this move; Jesse refused to discuss it. Perhaps, having made an effort to return to his old outlaw ways, Frank found them not to his liking.

More likely, Annie had persuaded him to lay down his guns for good. Had she promised to carry out her threat to leave him? Had she forced him to choose between her and his son and the James gang?

The announcement hit Jesse hard. He and Frank had always been close. For years, they’d lived parallel lives, fighting the same enemies, working together to pull off robberies in half a dozen states, seldom living more than a few miles apart. Their public personae were also a unit: ‘Frank and Jesse James’, or sometimes, simply ‘the James boys.’ Not even I could claim to know Jesse better than his brother.

But tension between them had increased in recent months. Whether this was due to Annie’s influence, or because Frank had grown more cautious with age, while Jesse had grown more reckless, I couldn’t say. I don’t recall a single big argument that signaled a break between them. There was no visible animosity in their interactions, but I sensed a heavy sadness between them—the grief of two people who loved each other, yet who could not be reconciled.

I believe no one was happy about the separation except Annie. I sensed her triumph when she and Frank stopped by our house to make their farewells their final morning in Kansas City. The brothers said a stiff goodbye on our front steps while Annie waited in a carriage in the street. The men’s grim expressions and overly formal address said more than their words about the tension between them. “Don’t bother to write; it’s too dangerous,” Frank said.

Jesse nodded. “You know if you ever change your mind and want to come back, you’re welcome here.”

Frank glanced toward the waiting carriage. “I don’t think I’ll do that.”

“Then I wish you safe travels.” They didn’t shake hands, or embrace, or make any of the gestures of two men who had once been so close.

Frank straightened his hat on his head and nodded. “You take care of yourself, Dingus.” Then he turned and climbed into the buggy and drove away.

Jesse watched them, the muscles of his jaw clenched, until they turned the corner and disappeared from sight. I came to stand beside him. “Do you think Annie put him up to this?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Buck hasn’t been happy since we left Tennessee. I thought taking up arms again would cheer him, give him a sense of purpose, but he’s lost the heart for it. And he’s lost his nerve, which is dangerous for any man in our business. It’s better that he go away. Better for both of us.” But there was no conviction in his words.

He glanced at me. “Of course, Annie being so disapproving didn’t help,” he said.

“If I told you I disapproved of what you’re doing, would it make any difference?” I asked.

“No. But then, you knew that before you asked.” He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm. “I am what I am, and you accept that. It’s the one thing I’ve always counted on in this world.”

He was right, of course. I loved Jesse because of the man he was, and in spite of it. Nothing he could do could change that, any more than I could will myself to stop breathing.