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

locomotive that was slowly susurrating, his right arm slung over Foote’s shoulders, his manner affectionate and delighted, his mood invigorating. At the cab Jesse athletically shook the man’s hand, leaving a silver coin in the engineer’s palm like a sidewalk magician. Chappy Foote later claimed he said, “You are a valiant man and I am a little stuck on you. Here’s a dollar so you can drink to the health of Jesse James tomorrow morning.”
    “Obliged” was all that Foote could think to mutter.
    “Now, what about that roadblock? Shall I have the gang remove those stones? I could hitch a team to that cottonwood and tow it right off the rails.”
    “No, don’t bother. To tell you the truth, about the best thing you could do for me is take yourself and your party far away from here.”
    Jesse said, “All right, partner. Good night,” and clambered up the bank in his billowing gray coat, reducing into darkness.
    THE JAMES GANG walked their horses south through scrub brush and over fire ash that was no warmer than a morning bed. They loped onto a road and into a gully and threshed through a cornfield with tassels high as the saddle cantles. There Frank moved among the veterans, distributing each man’s allotment of cash and luxuries, auctioning off the gold watches and Mexican jewels, burning the securities and non-negotiable papers. Clarence Hite would later confess that each share was one hundred forty dollars but he was wretched at sums and unlikely to suspect chicanery, so it is probable that he was cheated, as were Andy Ryan, John Bugler, John Land, and Matt and Creed Chapman. Jesse had already piloted them over to a cowpath by a creek and, according to John Land, explained, “Boys, we just haven’t got time to divide the loot now—they’re too hot for us—and we didn’t get the money we expected to anyhow, but we’ll all meet on the right fork of the Blue River a week from tonight and you’ll get your cut there.” He never really intended to meet them again; the country boys were only meant to provide security during the robbery and easy prey for the sheriff afterward. On the night of the 7th, they rode off in five directions, feeling rather pleased with themselves, but by the evening of September 10th, Andy Ryan and John Land had been arrested in shacks near Glendale, Matt Chapman and John Bugler had been jailed, and Creed Chapman was only weeks away from a six-month imprisonment in which he lost forty-two pounds.
    The James gang segregated into three groups before riding out of the cornfield. Jim Cummins and Ed Miller navigated eastward for Miller’s house in Saline County; Dick Liddil and Wood Hite crossed the river near Blue Mills in order to rusticate on the rented farm of Martha Bolton, the widowed sister of the Fords, whom they were both trying to romance; the James brothers, the Ford brothers, and Clarence Hite rode west into Kansas City under a cold rain that moved over them from the north and knuckled their hats and sank their horses inches deep in the mire of wide, empty streets.
    Zee James was asleep on the sofa when her husband creaked the kitchen door and surprised her awake with a kiss, and she boiled water in a saucepan as Jesse chaired himself in his soaked coat and lied unnecessarily about a cattle auction in Independence where he’d purchased twenty steers at below market price and right away sold them by an exchange of telegrams with a livestock buyer in Omaha.
    Zee didn’t raise her eyes from the saucepan. “So you’ve got money again?”
    “Come out of it real satisfactory.” He was jubilant and still energized by adrenaline, an excitement he had come to crave like caffeine. He jumped up from his chair and gandered out at the red barn. He said, “Guess who I ran into.”
    She gave Jesse a wifely look and got a jar down from a pantry shelf.
    He said, “Buck, for one. Then Clarence Hite and two coves of his. They’re with the animals right now.”
    “They do satisfactory