Read The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel for Free Online Page A

The bundle of his own money slithered to the floor and rolled as Frank walked on and O’Brien’s small daughter redeemed it, saying, “Here’s some more money, Papa!” Frank turned and snatched it from her hand. Dick Liddil dictated that Mrs. C. A. Dunakin raise her hands overhead and whirl four times as he inspected her. He said, “Next time we pull off a job like this we’ll have a lady along to search you female passengers.” She retorted, “You might have a woman with you or a man dressed as one, but you’ll never have a lady.” An immigrant had his wallet tossed in a sack and soon beseeched Jesse to recover it so he could withdraw his insurance papers. His plea was denied as too time-consuming. Children wailed in corners, several women became hysterical and remained so throughout the night; men sat in chairs with blank faces, their hands lumped in their laps, having lost fortunes: their crabbed savings, the cost of a cottage, the auction sale of six Holstein cows, a laggard Silver Anniversary watch.
    Jesse squeezed past the porter, Williams, who had already been frisked, and pushed into the sleeping car, flinging green velvet drapes aside as he passed each berth. He shocked a yellow old woman whose hair was braided, whose frail hands were in prayer; otherwise the sleeper seemed empty until he parted the exit drapes and saw in the foyer two women in nightgowns and a piano of a fat man all huddled around the conductor. Something in the group’s timidity dispirited Jesse and he exited onto the platform, where he saw that Frank and some of the others were on the cinder bed shedding loot into a flour sack. Near the caboose were workers on the freight train who’d slunk forward to innocuously watch and whisper about the activities. Horses had been fetched and they nickered and fussed in the attic of weeds and timber over the cut. Wood Hite and Ed Miller had entered the sleeper with fire axes that they used to rip bedding off and snag mattresses from their boxes. The gang’s visitation on the Chicago and Alton had now lasted nearly forty-five minutes and was beginning to deteriorate into carousal. Jesse went back inside the sleeping car and shouted, “Okay! Let’s vamoose!” Then he twisted the neck of his grain sack and limped forward outside the sleeper and ladies’ coach, exaggerating the heft of the valuables as the victims peeked under the curtains. He saw Frank Burton sitting on a platform, looking bankrupt, and asked how much was stolen from him. The young brakeman answered that he’d given up fifty cents and that was all he had.
    It was later recorded that Jesse dug into the grain sack and gave Burton a dollar and fifty cents, saying, “This is principal and interest on your money.”
    Jesse delivered the loot to Jim Cummins, who’d reappeared after one of his typical evaporations, and he uttered a kindness to Henry Fox, who was looking scalped and catatonic, his ears sirening. (He resigned from his job within the month and sued the express company for damages, without luck.) Having been relieved of his assignment, Bob Ford scrabbled up the bank to the woods and scuttled through bracken, nettles, and thorns to the gathered horses, where he removed the white mask with the cut-out eyes. Charley Ford sidled over to his kid brother and said, “I was in top form tonight.”
    “That messenger, he’s going to have trouble recalling his name! ”
    Charley leered. “Surely gave him a goose-egg, didn’t I?”
    “Goodness!”
    Charley asked, “Did you see me roast that one gent for standing on his cash?”
    “No,” Bob said, “I missed that. I was outside, y’see.”
    “He kind of skidded when he walked was how I knew. Must’ve had his shoe atop fifty dollars. And his wife, she was in a state, her beady little eyes all squinched up.”
    “Really took the cake, did she?”
    “Oh my, yes,” said Charley. “Jesse’s gonna be satisfied with me.”
    Jesse James was then walking the engineer to a