April 1882Billy Drury
Farmer
Clay County, Missouri
Normally, I shy away from funerals—they remind me too much of that one I’ll be forced to attend one day. But I don’t suppose I could pass up Jesse’s. I’d attended his baptismal, afterall. I’d seen him check in, so I couldn’t very well miss seeing him check out. And Jess went in style, I must say.
The railroads—those same ones he’d robbed—supplied a special train that brought his body from St. Jo to Kearney. His wife, his mother, and his children—not to mention a dozen special police—rode with the coffin. All along the right of way folks lined up to wave and say goodbye. Little children laid pennies along the tracks for the iron wheels to flatten and kept ‘em as souvenirs.
When they unloaded the coffin at the station, a fellow in rebel
