The Jesse James Scrapbook

Spring 1850

Spring 1850Billy Drury, Farmer

Clay County, Missouri

Up in Liberty, just north of my place, the citizens employed a bugler who blew taps at sunset to let the slaves know it was time to get off the street. Ever since I could remember, that bugler had spouted off—taps at sunset, reveille at sunrise—and an awful thing it was. I heard that bugle but turned a deaf ear—sold my corn, sold my hemp, took the money and was glad of it.

Yes, I knew Jesse’s pa.

The Reverend Robert James, that would be. He lived about fifteen miles from here, up near Kearney. Had a decent sized place. Grew corn and hemp like most of us. Kept a half-dozen slaves, but I can’t tell you how he reconciled such a practice with Christian charity. He did ride circuit around here, founded a church or two and was forever holding revivals.

My little farm was down by the river—by crossroads, near the ferry—so it was natural enough for him to stop by every now and again.

“Ain’t seen you up to New Hope Baptist since your wife died, Mr. Drury.”

“No, guess you ain’t.”

Big fellow, he was. Tall like Frank. Handsome like Jesse. Every time I turned around back then, seemed like, there was the Reverend James, sitting atop his black mare, looking down his nose at me.

“How’s Tom Jeff comin’ along?” he’d ask. I owned a thoroughbred horse named Thomas Jefferson, in those days.

“Tom Jeff’s comin’ along fine,” I’d say. “How’s the wife and children?”

“My wife is always well, and Frank is a quick learner. Care to sell him, Mr. Drury? Tom Jeff, I mean.”

Most fearsome thing about the Reverend was his eyes—like iron, they were—and a somber sight, he could be—in his black suit, on his black horse—with those eyes fixed dead on you.

“No ’hoppers this year, praise God,” he’d say.

“Yes sir, no ’hoppers,” I’d reply. “Praise God,” I might add, just to cover my tracks.

One fine day in the spring of eighteen and fifty, I was out cultivating my little vegetable garden—beans, carrots, cabbage—you know. The sparrows were a-twitterin’ and the bees were a-buzzin’. It was one of those glorious days of days when you knew old man winter was done for at last and you just felt like singing out loud.

Then, somehow, the Reverend James, on that big black mare of his, managed to sneak up behind me.

“Afternoon, Mr. Drury.”

My heart jumped about a foot. It was all very strange. The dogs hadn’t even barked.

“How’s Tom Jeff doin’?” he asked.

“Tom Jeff’s doin’ fine,” I said, my heart pounding a tattoo.

“Still ain’t seen you up to New Hope Baptist.”

“No, you still ain’t.”

He shifted around in his saddle and made himself comfortable.

“I been considerin’ going out to California,” he said, staring at me all hard-eyed. “Save a few souls, maybe. Pan a little gold, maybe. What do you think? The adventure of a lifetime, I’d say.”

“Ain’t a bad idea,” I told him. Thousands were doing it. Argonauts they called themselves and as green as green could be, they were.

“Shouldn’t be all that difficult,” the Reverend said. “I’ve purchased a guide book.”

“Capt’n Fremont’s?”

“Precisely,” he said. “And I have prayed over it.”

Some folks say the real reason the Reverend James headed west was because his wife was cheating on him, but I never believed that. Nor do I believe that little Jess clung to his legs and pleaded for him to stay, like other folks say. Jess would have been but two or three years old at the time. It could have happened that way, I suppose, but I don’t know for sure. I didn’t pay much mind to those boys back then, to tell the truth.

“I’ll be back in a year or two,” the Reverend told me. “My pockets will be bursting and the future assured.”

He never did come back. Dysentery, it could have been. Cholera, maybe. Jess went looking for his grave after he growed up, but I don’t think he ever found it. Can’t say for sure. You know how men are. Jess never talked much about the experience and I never asked.

His ma remarried a few years after the Reverend died. But I can’t tell you much about that fellow, either. I first met him over in Keatsville, when I was selling my hemp to Sidney Marion Keats. Sid had a ropewalk on his plantation up there, you see. He was the one who introduced us.

“Billy Drury, say hello to Dr. Reuben Samuel.”

“Mr. Drury,” Dr. Samuel said, smiling.

He seemed the exact opposite of the Reverend—not overbearing in the least, but calm, I’d say. Pleasant, even.

“Glad to meet you, doctor,” I said, as we shook hands.

“My pleasure,” he said. “Absolutely.”

He never practiced medicine after he married, don’t know why—preferred farming, I suppose.

“Care to have a look around, gentlemen?” Sid Keats asked. Red haired and dapper was how Sid looked—a genuine, dyed in the wool, Southern cavalier. During the war, he became a great general and, afterwards, an ardent supporter of Frank and Jesse James, but he was still just Sid Keats, in those days.

“We’ve made some big improvements since your last visit, Billy. You might want to see them.”

I told him no thank you.

I’d toured his ropewalk once, you see, and once was enough. It stood about a mile off from the plantation house—out of sight, like a snake in the meadow. A thousand feet long, it was, because the weaving of the rope had to be done in a straight line. The hemp was spun into yarn, and the yarn was twisted into long strands. Then the slaves would tie these strands to their waists, and walk back and forth all day long, three hundred groaning spiders, weaving the hemp—my hemp—into rope.

“Dr. Samuel?” Sid Keats said. “Care to have a look around?”

“Yes. Certainly. Never having seen it before, and since we’re going to be doing business.”

“You’re sure, Billy?”

I shook my head, no. “I’ll just set on the porch and enjoy the peace, if you don’t mind.”

The back porch of Sid’s plantation house, the verandah, he called it, overlooked the flower gardens and the lawn. It was lovely sitting there, watching the black women weed and the black men mow. I made myself comfortable and a boy brought me hot tea and corn batter cakes from the cookhouse.

Skinny, he was, and barefoot, wearing nothing but a man-sized shirt that hung down to his knees. I asked him how old he was, but he just smiled and backed away.

“Ten?” I said. “Eleven?”

When he grinned I saw how bad his teeth were—worse than mine, even.

“The South has been a colony of the North too long,” Sid Keats said later on, as we sipped our tea on his doomed veranda.

Dr. Samuel seconded the motion. “It’s time we stood up for our rights. What do you say, Mr. Drury? We can’t back down, now. Can we?”

“Don’t know much about politics,” I said.

Sid Keats shook his head. “This isn’t about politics, Billy. It’s about freedom. Missouri cannot be free unless Kansas is slave. You can understand that, can’t you?”

Kansas was getting ready to come into the Union about that time, as I recall. Slave state, free state, it didn’t matter much to me.

“But the Puritans are trying to impose their will on us, Billy. They’re coming down from Massachusetts to stuff the ballot boxes. You don’t like Puritans, do you?”

“Don’t know any Puritans.”

Dr. Samuel shook his head. “You wouldn’t like them if you did.”

Later on, Sid passed by my place on his way to the ferry. Had a few friends with him—two or three hundred would be my guess—mounted, angry and armed to the teeth.

Sid called out to me from atop the fine-blooded charger he rode. “You going with us, Billy?”

“Well, what kind of picnic is this?” I said, standing safe inside my garden. “And where are you going anyway?”

“We’re going to Kansas to vote,” Sid Keats said.

“Vote? Why you’re Missourians. How can you vote in Kansas? And what are you carrying all those guns for?”

Sid Keats laughed. “Your second question answers your first. We’re paying a dollar a day plus whiskey. Are you with us, sir? Or are you against us?”

I heard wild-eyed John Brown preach in Lawrence, Kansas, once. A regular fortified town, Lawrence was in those days—it got burned out in fifty-five, as I recall, then again by Quantrill in sixty-three. Frank was in on that raid. Cole Younger was, too. Some folks say Jesse was there, others say he wasn’t. He was only fifteen or so, at the time. But I can’t tell you the truth of that, either—damn lot of good, I am. It just ain’t the kind of question a wise man asks of Jesse James, you see.

Don’t matter, one way or the other, though. Jess murdered and pillaged with the best of them, once he was given the chance. And as for John Brown, well, he was just about as crazy as any Southern cavalier you might care to mention.

“Without the shedding of blood,” cried he, “there is no remission from sin. One Sharp’s rifle will have more effect on the slavers than a thousand Bibles.”

That was when the shooting started—the guerrilla war on the Kansas-Missouri border. Folks killed each other, ran off each others stock and burned each others farms. Once it got started there was no stopping it.

“Are you with us, sir? Or are you against us?”

I was born the same year Dan’l Boone died, by the way. First president I have much recollection of was Andy Jackson. Yes sir, Andy was president, and the common man was king when I was a boy.

Frank and Jesse, they weren’t so lucky.