The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (32 page)

I finished reading the newspaper account of the robbery while the two of them bickered. I began to feel better as I read. “It says here all the bandits got away. And no one on the train was killed.”

“No one was killed
this time
,” Annie said.

“Jesse’s not stupid,” Frank said. “But he thinks he’s invincible.” He spooned oatmeal into his bowl. “He’s stirred up a hornet’s nest with this robbery. The railroads have gotten complacent, thinking their troubles were over, that the James Gang was done for after that fiasco in Northfield. Now this has happened and I can guarantee they’ll be out for blood.”

I felt cold all over. For so long, we’d lived with the threat of discovery, but in the last few years that threat seemed to have waned. As Mr. and Mrs. Howard, we had a comfortable life. We were part of our community. We had friends and participated in our church—was having a few extra dollars in Jesse’s pocket worth throwing all that away?

“I think I’ll check on the children,” I said, and excused myself from the table.

Tim was playing with Mary and Rob in the backyard, drawing the outline of a town in the dirt and parading little wooden soldiers and stick men through it while the babies clapped their hands and laughed at the entertainment. He glanced up as I approached. He had his father’s clear blue eyes and upturned nose, and an innocence that made my breath catch in my throat.

“Is everything okay, Mama?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“You look worried.”

For his sake, I pasted on what I hoped was a comforting smile. “I was thinking we might go back to our house this afternoon,” I said.

His eyes lit up. “Is Daddy coming home?”

“Soon, I hope,” I said. I squatted beside him and watched as he galloped a wooden horse through the dirt streets of his town. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m riding my race horse,” he said. “Away from the bad men.”

I put one hand over my eyes to hide the tears that overflowed. Was Jesse even now riding his racehorse away from bad men as I waited here, unable to do anything to help him?

The next afternoon
I packed our things and Frank agreed to take us back to our little rented house. Since we’d heard the news of the Glendale train robbery, things had been tense between Annie and me, and I think Frank was grateful for a reprieve. “Annie will calm down in a few days and feel bad about some of the things she said,” he told me as he carried my trunk into the house.

I nodded. “You and Annie have always been good friends to me,” I said. “But it’s only natural now that she’s worried about her own family more than mine.”

“You need anything, you send for me,” he said. “And if you hear from Jesse, you let me know.”

“I will. And I know you’ll do the same.” He nodded and started to leave, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him. “What did Jesse say to you when he came by your place before he left town?” I asked.

He shoved both hands into his back pockets. “He wanted me to go back to Missouri with him, to get up a gang and do another bank job, or clear out the express car of a train.”

So Annie had guessed correctly. “What did you tell him?” I asked.

“I told him no. That things are too hot for us to risk getting caught.”

“Because you and Jesse are too well known?”

“Because times are changing. When we first started out, nobody expected to be robbed. Half the time the guards didn’t even have guns. You told somebody to open a safe and they did it. Now everybody’s armed and everybody wants to be a hero.” He spat in the dirt. “There’s telephones to send word around the country faster than a horse can ride. Even the contents of the safes are different—it’s all checks and bonds instead of greenbacks and bullion.” His eyes took on a haunted look. “And most of the men we rode with—the bushwhackers who knew how to ride and shoot and find their way around rough country, men with grit and sense—they’re all dead or in jail. Jesse and I are about all that’s left.”

I couldn’t bear to look at him any longer, at his homely, sad face and world-weary eyes. There was no sign of the wild rebel in him now. I looked past him, toward the corral where Jesse’s beloved Skyrocket and another horse, a bay named Kentucky, loafed. “I don’t think Jesse can accept that the glory days are over,” I said. “He wants things to be the way they were—all the excitement and the fame. And maybe the danger, too. I think
. . .
I think ordinary life is too tame for him. That he doesn’t feel as alive if he’s not risking something, whether it’s money at the race track or his life robbing a train.”

“I am one, my liege, whom the vile blows and buffets of the world hath so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.”

At my blank look, Frank smiled faintly. “Shakespeare, from
Macbeth
. Annie and I have been reading it in the evenings.”

“So you think Jesse is spiting the world?”

“Maybe.” He patted my shoulder. “Take care of yourself and the children, Zee. As for Jesse—maybe all any of us can do is pray for him. The rest is up to God and the government.”

I didn’t hear from Jesse for that week, or the next. I told myself he was laying low, avoiding the lawmen who were crawling the country, searching for him. We had experienced these separations before and Jesse always came home to me.

But doubt nibbled at me like ants. What if this time was different? What if Jesse, having tried the role of stable family man and found it wanting, had chosen the carefree life of the rebel instead?

I returned Mary, who was still wailing, to her cradle. “Keep an eye on your sister,” I told Tim. “I’m going out to the barn.”

“Mama, no! Don’t leave me.” He followed me into the mud room, where I shoved my feet into a pair of Jesse’s old boots and reached for his slicker that hung on a peg on the wall.

“I have to see to the horses,” I said, tying a scarf tight beneath my chin. “You’ll be fine until I get back. Stay away from the stove. Talk to your sister.” Not giving my courage time to falter, I yanked open the back door and pushed into the teeth of a gale.

Rain lashed at my face like icy needles. I sucked in my breath and ducked my head, my feet sinking in mud as I fought my way toward the barn. The wind buffeted me, tearing at my too-big coat. Rain cascaded down my back, soaking me to the skin. My boots filled with water and my hair fell down over my eyes in a damp tangle, obscuring my vision. I shoved it beneath the scarf as best I could and bent nearly double, keeping on a crooked course toward the barn.

As I drew nearer the dark opening, I could hear the harsh thuds of the horses’ hooves striking against the sides of their stalls, and the high-pitched neighing that rose to a frantic pitch.

I felt my way along the open door to the edge, and fought the wind to pull it closed. The constant beating back and forth had worn a rut in the dirt, which had turned to a mud dam. I kicked at this barrier, leveling it out so that I could drag the heavy wooden door over it. As I finally wrestled it closed, I heard the sound of shattering wood as one of the horses destroyed part of its stall.

I latched the door and tied the latch in place, then with numb, fumbling fingers managed to light a lamp. The scene the light illuminated made my stomach plummet. The bay, Kentucky, had kicked out two slats of its stall and was working on a third. Skyrocket had stopped kicking, but stood in the middle of his stall, wild-eyed and trembling.

I went to Skyrocket first, murmuring soothing nonsense. I found a blanket and threw it over his sweating back, then I leaned over the top of the stall and caught his bridle and fastened it to an iron ring in the barn wall. I thought this would hold him.

Skyrocket secured, I turned my attention to Kentucky. His constant high-pitched cries sawed at my nerves even as his wild movements terrified me. I wished I’d thought to bring a gun from the house. At least then if the bay lunged for me in a fit of wildness I could shoot him.

I’d hate to do it, though. He was a beautiful animal, and a valuable one, too. Jesse always said a good horse was better than money in the bank. He could always find a buyer for his horses when he tired of them and the best ones, like Skyrocket, were good money earners at the track. Kentucky had not been with us long enough to prove himself, but I knew Jesse had high hopes for him.

“It’s all right, old boy,” I said, the way I had heard Jesse talk to the horses. “I’m right here to take care of you. You don’t have to worry about any—”

Thunder shook the air, drowning out my words, and sending the horse into a renewed frenzy. He kicked at the partition once more, sending the last of the wood flying, then lunged from the stall.

I dove out of the way, and cowered behind a feed barrel as the horse crashed around the small open area between the stalls. He pawed at the dirt, then struck at the door. But the wood there was stout oak, held with iron strap hinges. I felt confident it would hold. The question now was how could I keep Kentucky from hurting himself—or me?

He lashed out at the barrel behind which I’d taken shelter, rocking it, nicking his foot on the iron banding. The sight of crimson blood blossoming against his dark red hair galvanized me to action. I couldn’t cower here all night; I had to act to save us both.

When the horse turned away from me, I darted from behind the barrel and grabbed up a coil of rope. I wished I knew how to lasso an animal, the way I’d heard cowboys did. But I knew my chances of tossing a loop of rope around the whirling, bucking horse were slim to none. I’d have to take a more direct approach.

“Kentucky, look at me!” I commanded, trying to make my voice deep and forceful.

The horse whirled and faced me and I lunged for it, reaching for the bridle. I caught at the ring there and held on with both hands, my arms and shoulders straining to control the rearing animal, dodging the slashing hooves. Its screams echoed off the barn walls, and thunder reverberated around us, even as lightning showed through cracks in the siding.

I dug my heels into the dirt, ignoring the pain in my hands and back. I reasoned as long as I held on, the horse would eventually tire. Harder to ignore was the terror that filled my stomach and clawed at my throat. I turned my face away from the animal’s slashing hooves and prayed he wouldn’t knock me down and trample me.

“Mama! Mama!” My blood turned to ice as I heard the cries from the other side of the barn door.