The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (36 page)

“Maybe you ought to be,” Annie said. She rose and began clearing the table. “No more talk of any of this. It’s time to bring the children in so we can cut Frank’s cake.”

“Did you bake it yourself?” Frank grinned at her. Annie was not known for her skills in the kitchen.

“Mrs. Morrison baked it,” Annie said. “And Rob helped put on the candles.”

“All those candles are liable to attract the Fire Brigade,” Jesse teased. I was happy to see Annie’s remarks and his disagreement with Frank hadn’t put him out of sorts.

As the children rushed in from the kitchen where they’d been eating, he gathered Tim and Mary into his lap. “Did you clean your plates?” he asked them. “And drink all your milk?”

“Yes, Papa.” Tim put his arms around his father’s neck and hugged him close. “For my next birthday, can I have a cake as big as Uncle Ben’s?”

“Even bigger,” Jesse said.

“With choc’late,” Mary added.

“Yes, with chocolate.” He smiled at them and my heart turned over, moved by love and fear. All I wanted was for all of us to be safe and healthy—for Governor Crittenden to forget Jesse existed, and for Jesse to stop fighting the banks and railroad and whatever demons stirred inside him.

In early March, Jesse left home
again, saying he was going to visit his cousin, Wood Hite, in Kentucky. He returned only a few days later, in high spirits and riding a new bay gelding. He had plenty of money, both greenbacks and gold and silver coins. I could only guess how he’d acquired such a sum, though of course he kept to the fiction that he’d made the profit off the sale of commodities.

Dick Liddil was with him, his sly smile and overly-courteous manner fraying my nerves. “Can’t you send him away?” I asked that first evening when we were alone.

“Dick’s useful to me right now,” Jesse said. “You can tolerate him for a few days.”

Jesse was reluctant to even venture out of doors for the next few days, which confirmed my suspicions that the money was ill-gotten. He was waiting for the furor over the robbery to die down before he showed his face around town.

Saturday morning, he sent Dick to town to buy the latest papers. “There might be something in them for your scrapbooks,” he told me, laughter in his blue eyes.

Dick returned within a half an hour, hurrying up the drive almost at a run, several papers tucked beneath his arm. His sallow complexion was pale, his eyes agitated. “Bad news,” he said as he burst in the door. “Where’s Jesse?”

“In our room.” I followed Dick down the hall, to the bedroom where Jesse was polishing a pair of boots.

“Bill Ryan’s been arrested,” Dick announced, tossing the papers on the bed. “He’s sitting in the jail right here in Nashville.”

Jesse set aside the boot he’d been working on and picked up one of the papers.

“Right there.” Dick pointed to a column of print. “Says he’s been positively identified as one of the men who robbed the Muscle Shoals payroll last week.”

I picked up another of the papers and scanned the front page until I found a similar article. “Three bandits relieved payroll supervisor Alexander G. Smith of $5,240.18 in gold and silver coin and greenbacks at gunpoint,” I read. “The money was the payroll of workers on the Muscle Shoals canal project.”

Jesse frowned at the article. “Somebody better let Buck know,” he said.

“Let me know what?” I turned and saw Frank standing in the doorway, Tim holding on to his hand. “Nobody answered my knock, so Tim let me in,” Frank said.

“Tim, go play with your sister,” I said.

“I wanna stay with Uncle Ben and Papa,” the boy whined.

“Go to your sister, Tim,” Jesse said firmly.

When the child was gone, Frank stepped into the bedroom and closed the door. “I came as soon as I read the papers,” he said.

“No need for alarm.” Jesse tossed the paper aside. “Bill won’t say anything.”

“Can you be sure about that?” Frank asked. “He’s not one of the men we rode with during the war. These young fellows don’t have the same sense of loyalty.”

“Bill won’t talk,” Jesse said, but there was little conviction in his voice.

“There’s something else,” Frank said. “Did you notice who made the arrest?”

“I didn’t read that far,” Jesse said.

“Justice W. L. Earthman.” Frank’s scowl deepened. “The same Bill Earthman who’s spent the day at the track with Dave Howard and Ben Woodson on several occasions.”

“How long do you think it’s going to take him to make the connection between Mr. Howard and Jesse James?” Dick asked. “Especially if Bill starts talking?”

Jesse sucked in a deep breath. “We’d better leave,” he said.

“The sooner the better,” Frank said. “I’ve already got Annie packing.”

“Leave?” I cried, alarmed. “Where will we go?”

“Back to Missouri,” Jesse said. “I’ll send you and the children ahead on the train. I’ll meet up with you when I can.”

“Missouri? Jesse, it isn’t safe there.”

“We’ll be safer there, among country we know,” Frank said. “There are still people there we can trust.”

The brothers’ quick agreement let me know they’d discussed this before. The James brothers hadn’t escaped capture for so long by failing to plan ahead.

“Get the children and pack a trunk,” Jesse said. “We’ll send for what we can later.”

I wanted to argue against such a hasty decision, but the grim look in Jesse’s eyes silenced my protests. I hastened to pull our traveling trunks from the box room off the kitchen, mentally cataloguing the items we would have to take with us and those we would be forced to leave behind.

Frank returned to his home while Jesse and Dick readied the horses for travel and collected all the guns we owned and made sure they were loaded.

The children sensed the new tension in their parents; Mary began to cry for no reason, while Tim followed me from room to room, peppering me with questions. “Where are we going, Mama?” he asked. “Why are we going now?”

I made up answers I hoped would satisfy him, pretending we were going to visit relatives, and that our stay would be temporary.

But I had heard the determination in Jesse’s voice when he’d cited Missouri as our destination. It was the place he always came back to, drawn there by friends as well as enemies. That the governor of the state himself had declared his determination to put an end to men like Jesse deterred my husband not one bit. We were going home, and I knew we were going there to stay.

Jesse had just finished laying out the cards when the Carters’ eldest son came to the door. “Dad? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Jesse and Mr. Carter exchanged glances, then the older man slid his chair back and joined his son in the hallway. They conferred in hushed tones. My eyes met Jesse’s. I could see that he, like I, was straining to hear their words, but I could make out nothing.

Mr. Carter returned to the room. “There might be trouble,” he said.

Those words turned my heart to ice. My chair clattered to the floor as I shoved up from it. Jesse put a hand on my arm. “Stay here,” he said. Then he drew his revolver and followed our friend into the front room.

I followed, moving quietly so that Jesse wouldn’t hear and order me away. But I was determined to know what was going on. Jesse and Carter stood on either side of a large front window, guns raised, watching the road. Carter’s son stood near the door in a similar pose.

“What is going on?” Carter’s wife, Liv, spoke from behind me.

“The sheriff is out there with four other men on horseback,” Carter said. “I suspect there are others hidden in the woods back there, maybe some circling around.”

I swallowed hard and fought a wave of faintness. “Are we surrounded?” I asked, my voice thin and high-pitched.

Jesse spoke without looking at me. “We don’t know. Right now they’re not doing anything but sitting there and looking at the house.”

“Maybe we should fire a shot to warn them off,” Carter’s son said. He was seventeen, a big, broad-shouldered young man with the beginnings of a moustache on his upper lip. His face was pale, but he wore a determined expression.

“No,” his father said. “We’ll wait. Force them to make the first move.”

We remained frozen in place, a tense
tableaux vivant
. The only sound was the steady tick of the mantel clock as it counted off the seconds. I stared at the back of Jesse’s head, wishing I had the power to see through his eyes what waited on the road in front of the house. He stood so still, seemingly calm, eyes fixed on the road, gun at the ready. Was he afraid of facing death, or did he cope by refusing to consider the possibility? Did he have a strategy for dealing with the situation, or would he react on instinct?

As if feeling my gaze on him, Jesse turned and looked at me. “Sweetheart, go upstairs and check on the children,” he said. “Stay with them until I come for you.”

I started to protest, but part of me very badly wanted to know that the children were okay. So I turned and raced up the stairs, pausing at the door of our room to catch my breath before I tiptoed inside.

The children were asleep, Mary on her side, one knee drawn up to her chin, the other leg stretched out. Tim lay beside her on his stomach, arms folded beneath him. I noticed how tall he was getting, the hem of his trousers up above his ankles.

I tucked the blanket around them and smoothed my hand down Tim’s back, careful not to wake him. Then I went to the window and pushed the curtain aside a scant inch so I could look out.

The scene I saw chilled my blood. Five men on horseback, guns at the ready. They faced the house, expressions unreadable from this distance but their intent clear. I gripped the windowsill to keep from sinking to the floor, heart racing, every breath a tortured gasp. I had lost countless hours over the years in fear for Jesse’s life, but that anxiety was a poor counterfeit of the terror that gripped me now. Those guns held the promise of real death—an end to the life I knew.

An end to the man I loved.

I glanced at the children again, at their sweet, innocent faces. I tried to remember a time when I had been so unaware of danger. It seemed another lifetime ago, in a different world.

I bent to kiss each sweet head then, one hand in my pocket, stroking the grip of the pistol Jesse had given me so long ago, I slipped out the door and down the stairs. If Jesse was to die tonight, then I would be with him. I would not let him leave without me there.

I stepped into a scene unchanged from moments before. Jesse and Carter still stood on either side of the window, Carter’s son by the door, weapons drawn. Liv waited in the passage between living and dining room. I took up a post beside her. The minutes stretched on—five minutes, then ten. I wanted to scream or weep or do anything to find release. But like the others, I could only wait.

Then the three men drew away from the window and door at once. “They’re leaving,” Carter’s son said. “Why the hell are they doing that?”

I rushed to Jesse, though I didn’t touch him. I didn’t want to hinder him if he should suddenly need both hands free to shoot. Instead, I looked past him out the window, at the billowing dust that was the only sign a group of riders had been there.