Northfield (9 page)

C
HAPTER
N
INE
A
NSELM
R. M
ANNING

Try as I might, my hands would not quit trembling.

I am not a soldier, not a young man. I am a forty-three-year-old Canadian-turned-Minnesotan, an Episcopalian and Freemason, a Northfield businessman with a lovely wife and three-month-old daughter. For all of those things I have mentioned above, albeit not in that order, I found myself fighting when bandits attempted to sack our town. My town. My home for the past twenty years. I would not be deterred, no matter how frightened I was, no matter the danger of the situation. My life meant nothing, not in the grand scheme of things.

But…gee willikins! I acted as naive as most citizens on that Thursday afternoon. Even the first shot did not alarm me.

“What was that?” R.C. Phillips asked.

Phillips started walking toward the entrance of the hardware store, where I sat working on the books, but I waved him off. Earlier, I had read in the Rice County
Journal
that some Thespian group was performing at the Opera House that evening, and I warranted the actors in this combination had gotten permission through the local constabulary to ride up and down Division Street and raise a ruction, to draw up interest for the sordid melodrama that appealed to teen-age boys and ne’er-do-wells with too much time on their hands and an imagination whetted by the half-dime novels published by Beadle & Adams.

Yet when I heard the panicked shouts, and J.S. Allen’s warning—“Get your guns, boys, they’re robbing the bank!”—followed by muffled curses and an explosion of musketry, I understood the gravity of the afternoon.

At that moment, J.S. Allen, who owned the hardware store next to my own, ran inside my store, it being closest, out of breath, terrified but unfaltering. “Robbery!” he cried out. “Robbery! Robbery! We’ve got…to get the…guns.”

He tried to explain what was happening to R.C. Phillips, but I caught only bits and pieces. Allen had walked to the First National, temporarily being housed in the Scriver Building. One or two men had stopped him, struck him, cursed him. He had fled. They had fired at him, maybe in warning, perhaps with the intention to maim or kill.

I didn’t hear the rest. John Tosney and John Archer rushed inside as R.C. made his way to the door, pushing him away from the door and windows. “They’re robbing the bank!” one of them shouted. “Better stay off the streets!”

Yet I had no intention of doing such. Gunshots popped outside as I grabbed a handful of ammunition, picked up the Remington breechloader with which I had been practicing for the fall hunts, and stepped out of the store over stunned protests and made my way to the corner of Mill Square and Division Street.

“Get off the streets! Get back, you sons-of-bitches!”

At first glance, I knew more than two men were taking part in this affair. I spotted two men in front of the bank, three others galloping on horses, firing six-shot revolvers, yipping a bloodcurdling yelp, cursing. Desperate men.

“Better jump back now!” came a friendly if petrified voice near me. “Or they shall kill you.”

With trembling hands, I took careful aim. I squeezed the trigger, and shot a horse tethered in front of the Scriver Building.

This action aroused the wrath of one of the men in front of the bank. He wore a broad black hat and linen duster, as did all of these plunderers, and I could tell he sported long side whiskers, an auburn mustache and goatee. He snapped a shot over my head, screaming to one or all of his companions: “Kill that white-livered son-of-a-bitch!”

I tried to extract the shell from the rifle, but it remained stuck, so I hurried back inside the store, drew a ramrod, and, with R.C. Phillips’s help, rammed it down the barrel, pushing the hot brass cartridge out. In my haste, I had grabbed the wrong ammunition, but now I rectified this situation, and, armed with the appropriate caliber, I returned to my position, sweating, shaking, pale, but determined.

“Get in, you sons-of-bitches!” repeated the vile cry of one of the brigands.

More gunfire, and I realized my defense of Northfield was not a lone act. A shotgun roared, and across the street I saw men and boys of our town hurling stones at the men on horseback as they thundered past, firing pistols, ducking behind the necks of their mounts like red Indians. Impressive warriors…I will say that much for them, and brave, I suspect, but not as courageous as the people of Northfield, who rose to meet the threat. Boys and men, young and old, throwing stones at highwaymen firing huge pistols. Comrades, that is what I define as grit.

Another shotgun blast. And another. Rifle fire from across the street. Another shot from a nearby window upstairs. The popping of small pistols. Shattering glass and pounding hoofs.

Grit!

We were not prepared for a murderous invasion. We are peaceable city folk, but we would account well for ourselves on this day.

The man with the goatee jumped up from behind the dead horse serving as breastworks, pounded on the bank door, and shouted: “For God’s sake, boys, hurry up! They’re shooting us all to pieces.”

At that moment, his companion in front of the bank tried to mount his horse, but a lad—Elias Stacy, I would later learn, a fine boy of strong Canadian stock with two brave brothers—ran forward and shot him in the face with a fowling piece.

“Cole!” the man cried, falling back into the dust. “Cole! I’m hit, Cole! I’m hit!”

Elias Stacy whirled and ran back to find cover behind the crates stacked in front of Lee & Hitchcock’s store.

Grit, indeed. What bravery he had shown, and he was not finished. “Help me load this piece or give me another gun!”

“Keep your head down,” I told him, and took aim.

In front of the Scriver Building, the man with the goatee squatted beside his friend, who was halfway sitting up, shaking his head, not seriously wounded for Stacy’s weapon had been loaded with only chicken shot. I took aim again. A bullet whistled over my head. “Get back inside,” bellowed a man on horseback, “you damned bastard!” I rushed my shot, did not have a proper target, anyway, and saw the wooden post splinter, then the man with the goatee crumpled, whirled, snapped a shot. My .45-70 bullet had gone through the post and struck him in the hip, a scratch shot, but one I’d gladly take.

I leaped back as a bullet ripped past my ear.

The shakes worsened.

“Be careful,” another voice told me, calm but firm. “They have been shooting merely to warn us, frighten us. Now they are intent to kill.”

I blinked. Governor Adelbert Ames, newly returned to Northfield from his stay down South, stood beside me. “Take a deep breath,” he said to me. “Don’t stay in plain view too long.” He smiled. “You are doing fine, Anselm.”

“Would you…?” I offered him the breechloader.

His head shook. “You are the better shot, Anselm. Continue the fight, my good man. Can you shoot the other horses in front of the bank?”

I reloaded, drew back the hammer, and prepared to chance yet another shot as Elias Stacy darted across the street and dived through an open door, pleading again for someone to give him a weapon to use against these bushwhackers. I aimed at one of the other horses, but the rifle shook violently, and I ducked back, the breechloader un-fired. “I can’t,” I told Governor Ames. “Not the horses. I…just….”

“It is all right, Anselm,” the governor said soothingly. “I fear I could not kill a horse, either. So kill the men who ride them.”

That I felt I could do.

“Take careful aim,” the governor coached.

I stepped into the street again.

Up the road about a block, perhaps 130 or 140 rods away, I spied one of the outlaws, popping shots at our townsmen, hiding behind the neck of his horse. He was one of the few clean-shaven ruffians raiding our town, and I drew a bead on where I thought he might lift his body and give me a clear shot. When he did appear, just for a second, I squeezed the trigger, thought I saw him flinch, and leaped back behind the wall to reload.

Governor Ames smiled. “Great shooting, Anselm,” he said. “We could have used a man with your eye and pluck during the rebellion.”

My mouth felt too dry to even attempt a response. My hands trembled with such force it’s a wonder I hit anything that day.

“Chadwell! Stiles!” one of the outlaws yelled. “Stiles! Bill! Bill! Christ A’mighty!”

I worked another shell into the Rolling Block’s chamber, returned to my position, and saw the clean-shaven man lying dead in the dust. His horse trotted along casually, turned down Fifth Street as if heading for the Northfield Livery. Only then did I know for certain that my bullet had flown true.

I felt no compunction, no need for penitence (except, much later, for the horse I had slain), not even fear, not any more. I fired again, ducked back, heard the man with the goatee pounding on the door with the butt of his revolver, screaming: “For God’s sake, boys, come out! It’s getting too hot for us!”

The man with the goatee limped to his horse, swung into the saddle, firing, shouting at his rowdy friends inside the bank to finish their business. The man Elias Stacy had shot in the face with the shotgun had also remounted.

Horses thundered past us again. Smoke burned my eyes. My ears pounded from the roar of the battle.

Then a cry came from a voice I did not recognize, but it had to be from one of my neighbors.

“They’ve shot Alonzo Bunker!”

C
HAPTER
T
EN
C
HARLIE
P
ITTS

I’d ride through hell for Capt’n Younger.

Best friend I ever had, but then, when I think about it, I never met many men I’d label a pard, and damned fewer who’d call me his pal. Capt’n Cole, though, I reckon he’d ride through hell for me, too.

So when that pip-squeak of a bank teller scrambled to his feet and dived through the flimsy back door, I let out with an oath and took after him, mad more at myself than that paper-collar man, mad for letting the capt’n down.

’Course, it was young Bob who was supposed to have been watching him at the time. I had just stepped out of the vault to holler something at Frank when I heard the teller’s shoes pounding the wood floor and caught him out of the corner of my eye. “Shit!” I yelled, and Bob whirled, yelling something stupid. I ran after the fool Yank, snapped a shot, jerking the trigger at the last moment because I recollected that Capt’n Cole didn’t want us to shoot anyone iffen we could help it. ’Course, with all those shots coming from out in the streets, I wasn’t so certain nobody was following the capt’n’s orders no more.

“Stop that bastard, Charlie!” Frank James hollered at me, but I was already chasing the teller. He had pushed through the blinds, gone down the steps, and was raising dust through the back alley. Only twenty feet ahead of me.

“Kill that son-of-a-bitch!” Bob’s voice boomed inside the bank.

Which is what I figured, now, I had to do.

I raised my Smith & Wesson, pulled the trigger, figuring the capt’n’s rules didn’t apply no more that things had gone to hell. Nailed that running son-of-a-bitch in the back, through the shoulder blade, heard him gasp, saw him stagger, blood spurting, but damned iffen that rascal didn’t somehow manage to keep his feet. He was running south, had a funny way of running, like his legs wasn’t bending or something, maybe from fright. I thumbed back the hammer on my .44, but the banker was gone.

“Damnation!” I said, heard Bob Younger’s shouting from inside, and I rushed up the steps and back to the vault.

The older banker, he remained where I had left him, on his knees behind the counter, eyes wide, hands raised but shaking like some drunk’s. The younger guy, the one with the dark beard who had tried to lock me in the vault, he lay inside the vault, bleeding from where Frank had practically stoved in his head with his big Remington pistol.

“You get him?” Bob asked.

“Chicken fled the coop,” I answered.

“Well, hell, Charlie, that’s all right!” He grinned slightly at the noise from the battle being waged outside. “Seems the alarm’s already been given.”

Bob is Capt’n Cole’s kid brother, not a bad fellow at all, and I’d call him a man to ride the river with. All of them Youngers was.

I growed up near Commerce down in the Indian Nations, one of a dozen kids, though I had been pretty much on my own since the summer of ’60 when I got adopted out—bartered, reckon you’d have to call it—to work on a farm, our family being dirt poor like most folks down in the Nations. Mama was a Cherokee. Pa was a squawman, farmer when he wasn’t running whiskey for some white fellers over in Fort Smith. That left me nothing more’n white trash. Or a red nigger. Half-breed. Injun. Puke. Ruffian. You name it, but iffen you do it to my face, or if even I just gets word of it, I’ll kill you. A year or so later found me in Missouri, and that’s where I come across Cole Younger’s daddy.

He had been shot dead, thrown in some bar ditch. Me and the wife of this farmer I was working for—Washington Wells was his name, and I’d later come to use Sam Wells as one of my handles when on the dodge. Anyway, me and Mrs. Wells seen the body, and I’d covered him up with my saddle blankets and waited while Mrs. Wells rode to Westport to fetch help. It was one of them sultry days in June, threatening to rain. I just stayed with the body, by lonesome, to keep animals from the poor soul. Nothing anybody half decent wouldn’t do, but these wasn’t decent times in Missouri. Mr. Younger had been a wealthy man, a powerful one, with sons favoring Southern sympathies, same as me, and I reckon that’s why them Kansas Redlegs or Union vermin or Abolitionists or whoever killed him. That unfortunate circumstance is how I come to meet Thomas Coleman Younger. Later, Mr. and Mrs. Wells brung me over to Lee’s Summit to meet the Youngers. Capt’n Cole wanted to see me, to thank me personal for staying with his daddy. Capt’n Cole, he shook my hand, said he’d never forget what I done.

Shook my hand.

Me, Charlie Pitts, piece of squaw trash from the Nations, shaking hands with a rich feller like Cole Younger. Man had a strong grip.

Damned right I’d ride through hell for the capt’n. And his brothers.

“For God’s sake boys, come out!” It was Capt’n Cole’s voice. He pounded on the door with one of his pistols. “It’s getting too hot for us!”

“Frank?” Bob and I called out at the same time.

Frank James, about the coolest man in a fight I’d ever laid eyes on, let out with a curse, and kicked at the man he had buffaloed.

“The hell with this,” Bob said, grabbing the wheat sack of coin he had collected, and marched toward the door, not waiting for Frank’s orders. Mind you, Bob wasn’t scared. None of them Youngers never understood the meaning of fear, but I suspect Bob felt concern from his brothers, wondering how they fared out on the streets where the shooting was hotter than the gates of Hades.

Frank started to say something, but Bob barked out first: “My brothers are outside, Buck! Yours, too!”

Frank just stood there, gripping that big .44 till his hands shook and his knuckles turned white.

Wasn’t nothing like we had expected.

When we first left Missouri, we’d had a hell of a time, buying and racing horses, playing poker, whoring. One reason I always rode with the boys wasn’t just because of the capt’n and the way he had treated me, but because we had a fandango wherever we hung our hats. Some right interesting jollifications. We laughed a lot, too, even during the most desperate of situations. Sure, we’d fight amongst ourselves, but that was just natural. Mostly, we took things in stride, figured we wouldn’t live forever, but we’d have some laughs, spend some money, make a name for ourselves, and die game when the time come. I remember the capt’n and me, pretending to be on the scout for farms, having that exchange with the hotel landlord in Madelia about woods and such, and me, signing the guest register as Jack Ladd. Figured that’d get a chuckle out of the capt’n when we was in our room, and it sure had—Jack Ladd being one of the Pinkerton men who had raided the James farm a year or so back. I had meant to tell Frank and Jesse about that, make them two laugh, but had never gotten around to it.

Wasn’t sure now I’d ever get the chance to tell them.

Wasn’t nothing funny no more.

“It’s all gone to hell!” Frank said. “Let’s get out of here.”

He didn’t have to holler them orders at me more’n once.

“Yankee bastards!” Bob bellowed from the doorway. “They killed my horse.”

They had, too. Just shot it at the hitching rail where we had left it in front of the bank. Takes one low son-of-a-bitch to kill a horse. We never cared much for that down in the Nations or Missouri.

Capt’n Cole was hollering at his brother, telling him something, but I couldn’t make heads or tails out of nothing from all the shooting.

All right, I’ll confess that we was drunker than Hooter’s goat when we walked inside that bank, but I guaran-damn-tee you that I felt sober as a Mormon when I ran out, stopping at the door, taking in the scene. Savagerous, it was. The capt’n was bleeding from his left hip. Clell Miller’s face had been peppered by bird shot. Jesse sat on his high-stepping white horse riding up and down the streets, cutting loose with Rebel yells, firing pistols in both hands, reins in his teeth. Jim Younger galloped by, his trousers torn by pellets from a scatter-gun, and somebody from an upstairs window damned near Mowed his head off. I didn’t see Stiles, the guy who had told us how easy this affair was gonna be, not at first, then saw him lying dead.

Well, I let out a little cry of surprise right then and there. Bill Stiles—Chadwell he sometimes called hisself—was dead, him the fellow who was gonna guide us out of this place, get us home safe and rich.

“Shit and hell’s fire!” I said.

Which is what we had stepped in.

A bullet clipped the post nearby and sent splinters into my face. I snapped a shot at some kid throwing a rock as Jim Younger galloped past again, screaming at us to get on our horses and light a shuck out of this battleground.

The capt’n was there in my face, madder than a hornet. “What the hell kept you?” he hollered.

I give him a feeble answer, some excuse, ashamed of myself, and looked back inside the bank, yelling at Frank to get the rocks out of his drawers. “The game’s up, Buck!” I told him. “We got to get out of here. Bill’s dead!”

What I saw next haunts me, and I ain’t never been a man scared of apparitions and consciences and such. That cashier, the one whose throat we had nicked with a knife, whose skull we had cracked, who we had tortured and threatened to no avail—man was game as a bantam rooster though quiet and soft like most city gents—he had somehow climbed to his feet after Frank left him in the vault.

Frank busied hisself stuffing some paperbacks and silver in his trouser pockets, flung himself over the counter, made a beeline for the door where I waited.

“Frank!” I called out, and pointed my revolver’s long barrel at the cashier. He moved like he was asleep, the cashier did, his dark beard matted with blood, staggering for his little desk in the corner in front of the vault. I thought he might be trying to fetch a pistol, like the man I had shot had been eyeing just a few minutes before he made his break. I still had that little .32 in my waistband. Of course, as soon as I called out Frank’s name, it occurred to me that I didn’t need to holler no warning. That gent wasn’t doing nothing. Like I said, he was almost walking in his sleep, staggering, and he pitched toward his desk, trying to stop himself from falling hard to the floor.

He might have been all but dead already.

Frank, though, he whirled and fired. Missed, but Frank wasn’t done. God as my witness, I never knew Frank to act so, not when his family wasn’t threatened. It was like he was riding with Quantrill again, under the black flag, giving no quarter, expecting none in return. Maybe it was all that whiskey and wine we had been drinking before we went inside this damned bank. Maybe it was something else, the pressure from all we’d been through. But Frank, he went back to that cashier, like a man with a purpose, cocked his Remington, leveled the barrel.

The shot caused me to flinch. I’ve killed my share of men, but I always given them a fair chance. They was armed. They was intent on killing me iffen they could find the chance. This guy wasn’t doing nothing, nary an intention of anything but trying to keep from falling.

Frank shot him in the head, scattering blood and bits of brain and bone all over the poor bastard’s ledger and desk.

Murder. Ain’t no other word for it, and I wondered iffen Frank would slay the other banker, the one still on his knees on the floor, but Frank didn’t give him no second notice. Almost made me sick, it did, seeing that brave city feller get his head practically blowed off, but Frank was moving toward me—nothing I could do, not now—and I bolted outside, gathering the reins to my horse.

I sat in the saddle, crouching, covering Frank, making sure he didn’t get left stranded, didn’t see Bob Younger no more. Didn’t hardly see nothing but dust and gunsmoke and Frank James. Heard the capt’n shouting my name, saw him kneeling beside Clell Miller, who had just gotten shot off his horse, bleeding like a stuck pig. I started to ride over that way, but then Frank, he flinched, grabbed the saddle horn, somehow managing to keep a grip on his new model .44 Remington Frontier, and I knew he’d been hit.

“You hit?” I asked anyway.

“In the leg,” he said through clenched teeth, but, game and brave, he pulled himself into the saddle, cursing, wheeling his mount, and firing one way and t’uther.

“Let’s go, Charlie!” he screamed, and spurred his big dun, riding into the hell that awaited all of us on the streets of Northfield.