The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (16 page)

“How did you and Frank meet?” I asked as I filled a dishpan with hot water.

“We met at a horse race.” She scraped leftovers into the slop bucket.

“A horse race?” I couldn’t completely hide my astonishment. Race tracks were not places generally frequented by genteel young ladies from good families.

“Yes. I enjoy the races, whenever I can attend.”

Jesse and Frank were both wild for horse racing. They regularly entered their own horses and bet on others, losing prodigious amounts of money in the space of an afternoon.

“You must have made an impression, if you could distract Frank from a horse race,” I said.

“Actually, I scolded him because he was blocking my view of the track.”

I studied her more closely, trying to imagine this delicate creature berating a man said to be one of the most feared in the state. “How old were you?”

“I was seventeen.” She picked up a cup towel and prepared to dry the dishes. “All I knew was a man in a big hat was blocking my view of the horses in a race on which I’d placed a wager. I told him he either had to remove his hat or his person—I didn’t care which.”

I laughed. “What did he do?”

“He told me if I wanted to see I should come stand beside him instead of behind him. So I did.”

“And that was it?”

“After the race—which my horse won and his did not—he asked permission to call on me.”

“And now you’re married.” I plunged my hands into the hot, soapy water and began to wash the dishes.

“Now we’re married. But if my father had had his way, we wouldn’t be. When he learned the man coming to court me was the notorious Frank James, he ordered him to never come near me again.”

I smiled in sympathy. “He didn’t know he might as well tell the sun not to rise as to tell one of the James brothers not to do something.”

“I think Frank might have respected my father’s wishes if I’d agreed,” she said. “But I didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked. “I mean, you scarcely knew him.”

She was silent for a moment, the only sound the squeak of linen against a china cup as she dried it. “When my father looked at Frank, he saw a man who had broken the law,” she said finally. “A man who had killed other men. I saw a quiet, modest man with a keen intelligence. A man who respected the strength of my own mind and will.”

“Yes.” I nodded. Maybe because they had been raised by such a strong, forceful woman, both Jesse and his brother did not dismiss women as readily as some of their contemporaries. “Sometimes I read the newspaper descriptions of Jesse and it’s as if I’m reading about a stranger,” I said. “He’s been described as ‘ruthless’ and ‘blood-thirsty’ and I think this can’t be the same man who stays up all night, babying a sick horse, or the man who plays tag in the pasture with his younger half-brothers and sisters. The man they write about isn’t the one who sends me beautifully composed letters, or brushes out my hair for me at night.”

“I wonder.” Annie’s hands stilled, the cup towel dangling idly from her fingers. “Does love cause us to judge them differently, or is love a lens through which we see them more clearly?”

“Maybe it’s a little of both,” I said. Impulsively, I reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m glad Frank married you. It’s good to have someone close who understands.”

She nodded. “I’m hopeful now that they have families and responsibilities, Frank and his brother will settle down and not be so restless and on the lookout for trouble.”

My heart went out to her. Hadn’t I so recently shared those same hopes? “I don’t think marriage is enough to change a man,” I said. “They are what they are, and we must accept that.”

She nodded. “I expect it won’t be easy at times, but I’m determined to stand by him.” A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I’ve made the biggest wager of my life and I don’t intend to lose.”

Marriage to Jesse introduced
me to a new world—I took on not only the new roles of wife and mistress of my own household, but I became a part of the universe over which the James brothers ruled, a world in which finances were determined by whatever they could take, people were judged by which side of the war they had supported and notoriety was welcomed as equally as it was feared. While Jesse loved being famous, Frank preferred the anonymity that was vital to their continued survival. Yet, in the state of Missouri at least, the name James had a power that guaranteed the brothers a measure of safety against those who pursued them, an invincibility that kept us balanced between caution and recklessness.

Jesse’s friends and allies became my friends as well. Among my favorites was Clel Miller, who had ridden alongside Jesse and Frank during the war. He was an affable man with sleepy brown eyes and hair that curled around his head like a halo. I also welcomed Cole Younger, the man who had asked me to dance at my sister Lucy’s wedding. Cole was a frequent visitor to our home, along with his brothers, John, Jim and Bob. The men spent many an evening in our parlor or on the front porch, smoking and talking of their days riding with Bloody Bill. Often Annie was there as well. She and I sewed or drank tea in the kitchen and talked into the night. Even now I look back on those companionable evenings fondly. This was the contented life I’d imagined during those years when I’d waited for Jesse.

As the sons of a Baptist preacher, Frank and Jesse seldom drank, and Jesse was so indisposed to use profanity that he had earned the nickname ‘Dingus’ when he rode with the bushwhackers, after a made-up word he had used as a curse.

So I was startled one evening to hear Jesse’s voice coming from our parlor, raised in anger. “God dammit, Buck, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you see what an opportunity this is?”

“An opportunity to get killed,” Frank answered. “It’s too reckless.”

“That’s why we’re the only ones who could pull it off. It’s reckless and daring, and profitable.”

“I worry about you, Dingus. You’re starting to believe your own press.”

Annie was not with me that night, so I retreated to the kitchen alone and shut my ears to their discussion. The harsh words disturbed me, and every sense told me danger was near. I told myself everything would be fine. I didn’t want to know the details of Jesse’s activities, at least before they happened.

Two days later Jesse kissed me goodbye. “Buck and I are going to take a little ride, maybe pay a visit to Mama for a few days,” he said.

I frowned. “You’re going to see your mother?”

“We may stop off a few other places while we’re away, but we’ll be sure to stop in at the farm for a few days. I’ll tell Ma you said hello.”

“Yes, do.” No doubt, Zerelda would have a few choice words to say to her son about his wife. I wondered if she’d met Annie yet. Did she approve of her rich, educated blonde daughter-in-law any more than she had of me, her poor, dark namesake?

“You’ll be all right here?” Jesse asked.

I nodded. “Of course. But I’ll miss you. Hurry home.”

“I will, Sweetheart. I’m always anxious to get home to you.”

Being alone in the little house felt strange after so many weeks in which Jesse and I had been virtually inseparable. Annie must have felt the same, for she came and asked if she could spend the night. “I don’t like being at our place by myself,” she confessed. “Besides, I hope with you for company I’ll worry less.”

“Why are you worried?” I asked. I wasn’t enamored of the idea of Jesse leaving me alone to call on his mother, but she was, after all, his mother, and it was to be expected that a dutiful son like Jesse would visit her.

“You don’t really believe they took this trip just because they missed their mother, do you?” Annie asked.

I flinched at the scorn in her voice. “What else would they be doing?” I asked.

Annie took both my hands in hers and looked me in the eye. “Zee, you do know what Jesse does for a living, don’t you?” she asked.

I jerked out of her grasp. “Of course I know. I’m not some naïve child.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said. “Jesse’s so protective of you I thought he might have managed to keep the true nature of his activities from you.”

“Jesse and I don’t have secrets like that,” I said. “I know what he’s done, though we don’t talk about it.” I hesitated, then added, “Does Frank talk to you about his work?”

She shook her head. “No. But I keep informed as best I can. I listen to things he says, make note of people he talks to. That way I’m never completely in the dark.”

“You
spy
on your husband?” I stared at her.

She shrugged. “I don’t think of it as spying. I learn what I need to know.”

“The less I know the better,” I said. “I can’t worry about what I don’t know about.”

I could tell by her disapproving look that Annie didn’t think much of this philosophy. “Then I suppose you don’t want to know where they went tonight,” she said.

“They
said
they were going to see their mother.”

“Oh, I expect they’ll get there eventually, but first they’re going to rob a bank. Or a train. Or maybe something else. That part I didn’t hear.”

“How do you know this?” I asked, astonished.

“I overheard Frank tell Jesse they’d need provisions for several days ride, and for Jesse to bring his maps.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re planning a robbery.”

Her violet eyes bore into me. “They both lost a lot of money at the track last week, and the rent on our houses is due at the end of the month. They have to get money from somewhere.”

I shifted in my seat. “That doesn’t bother you?” I asked. “That they rob other people to support us?”

She shrugged. “The men in charge of the banks and railroads took plenty from all of us during the war, and after, too. My father lost almost everything. I don’t feel much pity for them.”

I nodded. She made Frank and Jesse’s wrongdoing sound so logical—something anyone with sense would do if they had the nerve. When she explained things this way, it didn’t sound so much like sin—no more than my having sex with Jesse before we married had been a sin, at least—I’d been taught it was wrong, but since nothing bad had come of our actions, I told myself it wasn’t the sort of thing that put my soul in any real danger.

We learned soon enough that Annie’s prediction had been right: two days after they left us Jesse, Frank, and a third man (some say Cole Younger, some his brother Jim, and some their friend Arthur McCoy) waylaid a horse-drawn omnibus outside of Lexington, Missouri, ordered the passengers to disembark, then robbed them.

This proved a fine entertainment for folks from Lexington, who gathered on a bluff above town and watched the scene unfold. Amazingly enough, no lawmen were dispatched to stop the robbery-in-progress, and the three bandits rode away. No one was injured, and even the victims, though mourning the loss of their possessions, commented on the dash and gallantry of the robbers.

The audacity of the robbery, carried out in front of such a large audience, captured the imagination of newspapers around the country.
The Lexington Caucasian
reported: “The whole proceeding was conducted in the coolest and most gentlemanly manner possible
. . .
Prof. Allen doubtless expresses the sentiments of the victims when he tells us that he is exceedingly glad, as he had to be robbed, that it was done by first class artists, by men of national reputation.”

The authorities, however, were not so impressed at being made to look the fool. Lieutenant Governor Johnson sent St. Louis police officers in pursuit of the James brothers. They were at their mothers’ farm by this time, protected by the loyalty of friends and neighbors, and by Zerelda’s assertions in letters to journalists across the state that her boys were innocent of any wrongdoing—and any man who said otherwise would have to answer to her.