Read Online The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel by Ron Hansen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ron Hansen
Ads: Link
the four before she excused herself to walk on the lawn in her sweater so she could hear silence and take in the dark like a sedative and become somehow less alive. Jim and Bob were fine—cordial and slender and irresistible—but Cole was a red-haired beef of a man with sideburns and a horseshoe mustache, even more boisterous and extroverted than Jesse, a twin to him in his facial features, and the two in combination were so electric and incandescent Zee felt slow and shut-in and scorched.
And Cole was cruel; he fetched the viciousness in Jesse; he boasted with sayings like “I cooked his hash,” and frightened Zee with a Civil War tale about fifteen Jayhawkers he’d tied belly to back in a row in order to test an Enfield rifle at close range. Cole’s first shot bore into three men instead of the ten he intended and he had commanded, “Cut the dead men loose; the new Enfield shoots like a pop-gun!” He needed seven shots to slaughter all fifteen and said he reverted to the Army Springfield .45 from then on. Jesse listened with cold-blooded admiration, as if he’d had a rather intricate mathematics problem broken down on a blackboard; Zee brooded on how harrowed and deserted the last man killed must have been, hearing the rifle detonations and the moans of the Kansas soldiers, sustaining the lurch and added strain of cadavers on the ropes as execution moved toward him a body at a time.
And she would remember later that Cole mentioned the robberies of the banks in St. Albans, Vermont, where Confederate soldiers in civilian clothes showed their grit by getting the money in broad daylight and walking right out into the street. She would remember that because of a St. Valentine’s Day newspaper account about two men in soldiers’ overcoats who’d robbed the Clay County Savings Bank in Liberty, Missouri, and ridden off with twelve accomplices into a screening snowstorm.
Jesse came to the boardinghouse with divinity fudge and a red paper heart on which he’d doggereled about ardor, and as Jesse nudged a lizard’s fringe of flame from some embering logs, they talked about the crime, Jesse saying that it was really only just deserts for all Easterner-owned corporations like that. He asked, “How much loot does it say they got?”
She read that the thieves filled a wheat sack with sixty thousand dollars in currencies, negotiable papers, bonds, and gold. She also noted that a boy who happened by was killed by one of the men and that he was a student at William Jewell College, where Jesse’s father had once been on the board of trustees. “George Wymore?” she said. Jesse was still a moment and then said, “I know his folks.” She asked, “You don’t think it was the Youngers, do you?” He flicked the oiled paper back from the divinity fudge and broke off a sliver before sitting down on the floor next to her. He said, “I only know Cole’s been poor and Frank’s been with him.” He glared at the fire for a minute, his good lung not yet strong enough for him to breathe without gasps, his skeleton so evident that he seemed a young man dying. He said, “I’ll bet it was accidental,” and then he changed the subject.
Alexander Mitchell and Company, a banking house in Lexington, had two thousand dollars stolen from a cash drawer in October 1866. Five months later six bandits walked inside a firm in Savannah and demanded that Judge John McLain hand over the keys to his vault. He wouldn’t and an incensed man shot him in the arm (which in result was amputated), but the outlaws exited without McLain’s cash. And in May 1867, a rustler told his jail inmates in Richmond that the local bank would be robbed that afternoon. The rumor carried and the town square was monitored, deputies were readied, and the teller locked the two wide doors of the Hughes and Wasson Bank. Then twenty yipping, howling outlaws in slouch hats and linen dusters galloped onto the main street and fired at second-storey windows. A robber
And Cole was cruel; he fetched the viciousness in Jesse; he boasted with sayings like “I cooked his hash,” and frightened Zee with a Civil War tale about fifteen Jayhawkers he’d tied belly to back in a row in order to test an Enfield rifle at close range. Cole’s first shot bore into three men instead of the ten he intended and he had commanded, “Cut the dead men loose; the new Enfield shoots like a pop-gun!” He needed seven shots to slaughter all fifteen and said he reverted to the Army Springfield .45 from then on. Jesse listened with cold-blooded admiration, as if he’d had a rather intricate mathematics problem broken down on a blackboard; Zee brooded on how harrowed and deserted the last man killed must have been, hearing the rifle detonations and the moans of the Kansas soldiers, sustaining the lurch and added strain of cadavers on the ropes as execution moved toward him a body at a time.
And she would remember later that Cole mentioned the robberies of the banks in St. Albans, Vermont, where Confederate soldiers in civilian clothes showed their grit by getting the money in broad daylight and walking right out into the street. She would remember that because of a St. Valentine’s Day newspaper account about two men in soldiers’ overcoats who’d robbed the Clay County Savings Bank in Liberty, Missouri, and ridden off with twelve accomplices into a screening snowstorm.
Jesse came to the boardinghouse with divinity fudge and a red paper heart on which he’d doggereled about ardor, and as Jesse nudged a lizard’s fringe of flame from some embering logs, they talked about the crime, Jesse saying that it was really only just deserts for all Easterner-owned corporations like that. He asked, “How much loot does it say they got?”
She read that the thieves filled a wheat sack with sixty thousand dollars in currencies, negotiable papers, bonds, and gold. She also noted that a boy who happened by was killed by one of the men and that he was a student at William Jewell College, where Jesse’s father had once been on the board of trustees. “George Wymore?” she said. Jesse was still a moment and then said, “I know his folks.” She asked, “You don’t think it was the Youngers, do you?” He flicked the oiled paper back from the divinity fudge and broke off a sliver before sitting down on the floor next to her. He said, “I only know Cole’s been poor and Frank’s been with him.” He glared at the fire for a minute, his good lung not yet strong enough for him to breathe without gasps, his skeleton so evident that he seemed a young man dying. He said, “I’ll bet it was accidental,” and then he changed the subject.
Alexander Mitchell and Company, a banking house in Lexington, had two thousand dollars stolen from a cash drawer in October 1866. Five months later six bandits walked inside a firm in Savannah and demanded that Judge John McLain hand over the keys to his vault. He wouldn’t and an incensed man shot him in the arm (which in result was amputated), but the outlaws exited without McLain’s cash. And in May 1867, a rustler told his jail inmates in Richmond that the local bank would be robbed that afternoon. The rumor carried and the town square was monitored, deputies were readied, and the teller locked the two wide doors of the Hughes and Wasson Bank. Then twenty yipping, howling outlaws in slouch hats and linen dusters galloped onto the main street and fired at second-storey windows. A robber
Similar Books
