Free Northfield by Johnny D. Boggs Page B

enticing. The city supported three of them, including the First National at Plumb and Main with, word went, $100,000 in the till. Plus, upstairs sat the Goodhue Savings Bank, and Jesse—Mephistopheles that he is—said we could rob both banks at the same time. Wouldn’t work, though. I’ll give the James brothers credit. They had a peculiar talent, and, most times, Jesse or Frank planned everything real careful. That’s why we had been in business for the ten years since the war’s end.
    You have to take a lot of things into consideration robbing a bank, especially since we found ourselves in a foreign country.
    The way things worked, we always plotted our escape route, and that didn’t look good in Red Wing. With only two roads in and out of town, robbing a bank or banks in Red Wing would get us all shot to pieces or hanged.
    My job in these forays typically involved the hardware stores, to see what kind of guns they might supply. Red Wing had more than a few hardware stores selling double-wheel hoes, Acme cultivators, and Granger seeders. The city had Whitney’s Gunshop, where I bought a few boxes of .44 cartridges. Weasel of a clerk made the comment that he didn’t sell many shells that large, but he stocked them, along with a few Winchesters, too, even a Remington Rolling Block and one traded-in percussion Sharps, not to mention the little popgun pocket pistols and shotguns. Jesse didn’t like that, either. Too much firepower. If the alarm spread that the bank was being stuck up, we might find ourselves leaking like sieves, shot to pieces.
    So Frank and Jesse rode to Northfield, and Clell and I headed to St. Peter.
    Sometimes I thought we’d never rob anything in Minnesota, that this grand adventure would turn out to be nothing more than a sabbatical, that we’d have our fun tossing coins to wide-eyed children, playing poker, and poking whores, race some horses, buy some sound stock, run out of money, and light a shuck back to Missouri. Then, I’d bid good bye to Cole and Bob and ride the rails back to La Panza, where no one knew me as an outlaw. Start over. Start a family.
    Family.
    I’m the worrier of the Youngers. Cole, he’s the kind-hearted one, though most people, those who don’t know him, would likely figure him as the hardest of the hard rocks. Bob? I don’t know. If you’d asked me before the summer of ’76, I’d call him the kid, the follower, but he sure made a stand, against Cole and me, against all reason. Against the family, damn it all to hell. Impetuous. Guess that’s how I’d label him now. And me? Like I said, I’m the worrier.
    Which is why I started drinking.
    Cole, he’d seldom pull a cork, certainly never when we were hitting a bank or a train. Liquor robbed a man of reason, and Cole demanded we be alert and ready when on a case. That’s another reason we had been in business so long, despite turncoats and Pinkertons and other laws. My older brother could preach temperance like some circuit-riding Methodist. Nor would Cole ever take a hand of poker if Bob and I were sitting at the table. Figured it would lead to repercussions.
    Neither St. Peter nor Northfield held much interest to us, not at first, not after hearing all that flapdoodle Bill Stiles, or Chadwell as he sometimes was called, spouted off about money for the taking in Mankato. Those stories reminded me of all that talk about buckets full of gold just waiting to be picked in California and Colorado.
    I knew better. I started drinking after we rode up to St. Peter. Some of the boys were supposed to join us there, but, when they didn’t show, my nerves began tormenting me. I’d buy every newspaper I could find, and spend breakfast or supper reading every item, slurping coffee, trying to learn of any arrests.
    Nothing.
    So I’d sweeten my coffee with John Barleycorn. After a day, I quit with the coffee. Finally Bob and Stiles showed up, but we still hadn’t heard anything from Cole and Charlie Pitts, scouting, we