After the meal, the men gathered for one last consultation. “Early in the afternoon,” Cole Younger later explained, “we rode back on the Janesville road two or three miles to consult and arrange our plans. We agreed, by a majority vote, to rob the bank.… Three were to ride ahead and enter the bank as soon as Clell Miller and myself had crossed the bridge leading into the square.… Another quarter of a mile behind us the remaining three, including Jim Younger, were to take up their stand near the bridge.… If the alarm was given, I was to signal those at the bridge and they were to give the rebel yell and fire their pistols in the air to scare the people off the street.” Though he wrote this account twenty-one years later, he accurately described the bandits’ plan of operations. Indeed, the scheme was almost an exact replica of the Columbia robbery in 1872, when Jesse had led the charge into the bank and Cole had kept the streets clear. But Younger’s story left out one item the gang must have discussed: an article that Clell Miller had cut from the Rice County Journal, hailing the new Yale Chronometer time lock on the bank’s safe.64
As 2 p.m. approached, the outlaws rode past the Ames mill in their assigned divisions, their horses clopping onto the bridge that led into the square. It seems most likely that the last unit consisted of Bob and Jim Younger, along with Chadwell; that the middle pair comprised Miller and Cole Younger, as Cole later claimed; and that the first three were Charlie Pitts, Frank, and Jesse.65
Jesse and the two others cantered over the dirt square to the Scriver block, past Lee & Hitchcock’s dry-goods store on the ground floor of the building, then down to the bank entrance on Division Street. Again they attracted attention. George Bates watched from across the way as they “dismounted and tied their horses to the hitching posts … and two went down to the staircase leading up into the upper stories of Lee & Hitchcock’s.”66 Elias Hobbs observed as they “held [a] short conversation on [a] dry goods box” in front of Lee & Hitchcock’s. Dentist D. J. Whiting, whose office was at the top of the staircase, peered down to see one of them “apparently describing something to the other and illustrating the same with marks upon the box on which they sat.”67
The two men looked toward the bridge; Cole Younger and Miller were riding slowly across, right on time. Rising from the box, they walked back to their companion in front of the bank, their long spurs dragging, linen dusters flapping. As Younger and Miller halted in front of the door, the three men stepped inside.
Jesse and his companions walked into a narrow space shaped like a capital L, as viewed from the door, partitioned by a counter that formed a smaller L within it. Innermost of all was the vault, opening toward Division Street. Three men sat behind the glass-paneled counter: F. J. Wilcox, farthest from the door; A. E. Bunker, closest to the corner where there was an opening in the glass panels; and J. L. Heywood, to the right behind the cashier’s desk, facing in with his back to the wall. In the back, another open door, obstructed only by a hanging blind, led out into an alley that ran down to Water Street alongside the river. The setting was quiet, peaceful, industrious—the perfect target for a man with a gun.68
The three intruders drew their revolvers from under their coats, strode straight for the counter, jumped up, and scrambled over. “Throw up your hands, for we intend to rob the bank,” one of them shouted, “and if you hallo we will blow your God-damned brains out.” Waving their pistols, they ordered the startled bank employees onto their knees. Which one of you is the cashier? they demanded. “He is not in,” Heywood responded, though he himself was the acting cashier. (George M. Phillips was at the Centennial in Philadelphia.)69
Heywood, a bearded, thirty-nine-year-old bookkeeper who had fought at Vicksburg and Arkansas Post in the 127th Illinois Infantry Regiment during the war, clearly realized that, as the acting cashier, the weight of events rested on his shoulders alone. Only a week earlier, he had contemplated his actions in just such a crisis. President Strong of Carleton College had come by to see the new time lock on the bank’s safe. Bringing up the wartime robbery of the bank in St. Albans, Vermont, by Confederate raiders, Strong had asked Heywood if he would have handed over the money under such circumstances. “I do not think I should,” Heywood had said, according to Strong, “with his characteristically quiet manner.”70
Now his “quiet manner” faced its final test. The stress he felt must have been the most intense of his life. The man who held the gun had learned to cope with the emotional burden of life-and-death situations by constant repetition. As for Heywood, apart from his brief military service, his traumas had been at the bedside of his dying wife; his burdens had been his employers’ expectations, his family’s needs. In this moment, a thirst for revenge confronted an unarmed sense of duty. Today duty would win, but at a price.
Flummoxed by Heywood’s response, the outlaws turned to Bunker. “You are the cashier,” they said; he denied it, as did Wilcox. Then they looked again at Heywood—not only the oldest, but the only one who had been seated behind a desk. “You are the cashier,” one of the bandits said angrily. “Now open the safe you God-damned son of a bitch.”
“It is a time lock,” Heywood said, “and cannot be opened now.” One of the robbers saw that the vault was open and darted inside. Heywood jumped from his chair and heaved the heavy door shut. Immediately another bandit seized him by the collar, dragged him back, and released his trapped colleague. One man—described by Wilcox as the bandit in charge—drew a glittering bowie knife and held it to Heywood’s throat. “Damn you!” he seethed, and shallowly sliced across his esophagus, drawing blood. “Open that door or we’ll cut your throat from ear to ear.”
Heywood pushed himself free. “Murder!” he shouted. The gunman smashed his revolver against Heywood’s skull. The bookkeeper collapsed in a daze as his attacker crouched over him, threatening and demanding.71
All this time another bandit loomed over Bunker and Wilcox, who waited obediently on their knees. The twenty-six-year-old Bunker thought quickly: with the gunmen devoting most of their attention to Heywood, he might be able to reach a small Smith & Wesson revolver he kept under the counter. He began to edge gradually over to it, sliding his knees inch by inch across the floor. But one of the outlaws snatched it up and shoved it in his pocket.
When the robber turned toward the vault again, Bunker raised himself up slightly to see if he could catch someone’s attention outside. Whoever was guarding him saw this and became furious. Bunker later claimed that the gunman crowded Bunker’s head to the floor with the muzzle of his revolver. If you rise up again, he snarled, I will kill you. Where’s the teller’s cash? he demanded. The teller gestured to a tray containing some rolled-up nickels, but the outlaw seemed to know that there was more money than that outside the vault. He continued to search, jerking open one drawer that contained the bank’s stationery, but he passed over another that held some two thousand dollars.
A shot cracked in the room. Bunker’s guard turned toward the vault entrance, where another bandit held a smoking revolver at the head of the semiconscious Heywood. In his attempts at intimidation, he had fired a round next to Heywood’s skull, leaving him uninjured but no more cooperative. With all of the outlaws focused on the crumpled bookkeeper, Bunker leaped up and sprinted for the back door, crashing through the hanging blind and darting into the alley. Pitts immediately followed and shot Bunker in the back. The bullet passed through his upper chest, missing any organs or arteries, and he was able to stagger to safety.
Until that moment, the bandits had been fixed on the events inside the bank. After Bunker’s escape, they realized that gunfire was cracking furiously outside.72
WHEN COLE YOUNGER and Miller rode their horses across the bridge at two o’clock, they carefully watched their two comrades sitting on the dry-goods box in front of Lee & Hitchcock’s. “They are going in,” Miller breathed, as the other outlaws rose and strode back to the bank. The mounted men turned onto Division, then stopped and swung out of their saddles. Trying to be inconspicuous, Cole bent his two-hundred-
pound body to tighten his saddle girth while Miller pulled the bank door shut.73
Merchant J. S. Allen, meanwhile, watched these proceedings with rising suspicion. “Who are those men?” he asked John Archer, as the first three bandits rode up from the bridge. “I don’t like the looks of them.” His worries heightened as they waited on the dry-goods box, then rose to meet the two other men who rode across the square. “I believe they are here to rob the bank,” he said. Allen decided to investigate. Striding purposefully to the bank, he just glimpsed the face of Heywood through the closing door. The man who was pulling it shut “took me by my collar,” Allen reported, and said, “You son of a bitch, don’t you holler.” In Allen’s words, “I broke and run. Then they began to fire.”74
W. H. Riddell was watching these events from his store directly across from the bank. He, too, was concerned about the strangers’ intentions, and when he saw Allen so roughly handled—when he caught the words “son of a bitch”—he realized what was transpiring. “Robbers at the bank!” he shouted. Immediately the bigger of the two strangers vaulted into his saddle, drew a revolver, and squeezed off a few rounds, roaring at Riddell, “Get in there, you God-damn son of a bitch!”75
Chaos erupted on Division Street, as the two men in front of the bank began to fire in the air and order everyone inside. Three more bandits came galloping up from the bridge, thundering up and down the dirt lane, shooting and cursing. Some of the citizens looked around in confusion, then scrambled for cover; others, who had noticed the strangers earlier, grasped what was happening. At the first shot, George Bates looked at the salesman visiting his store and exclaimed, “Them men are going for the town—they mean to rob the bank.” Looking out the door, they saw the riders shooting and shouting, “Clear the street!” Bates ran for a shotgun. On the same side of the street, a young medical student named Henry Wheeler saw these events from his father’s drugstore. Seizing an old breech-loading carbine, he sprinted into the Dampier Hotel, shouting to clerk Charlie Dampier to bring him cartridges. Running upstairs to a second-floor window, Wheeler took two rounds, hastily loaded his gun, and snapped off a quick shot at the riders below.76
For Cole, the situation grew worse by the minute. He had hoped to get a start out of town before the alarm could be raised, as they had done at Huntington. That was now impossible, so they would have to follow the Columbia model: terrorize the citizens and keep the streets clear. Swinging a stout leg over his saddle, he drew a revolver and fired the shots that brought Jim and Bob Younger, along with Bill Chadwell, up from the bridge. Swearing and shooting, he and the others galloped up and down Division Street, driving everyone indoors.
Then things started to go wrong. Cole caught a glimpse of weapons held by men who peeked out from windows and storefronts. Already the first crack of return fire had burst from the second floor of the hotel looming across the street. Then he saw Miller crawling back into his saddle, his face bleeding from a dozen tiny wounds. Though Cole could not know it at the time, his comrade had been injured by Elias Stacey, who had fired a shotgun loaded with lightweight birdshot. Another round cracked from that window in the Dampier Hotel; Miller’s horse suddenly stopped short as the outlaw tumbled face first to the ground.77
“I jumped from my horse,” Cole recalled, “ran to Miller to see how badly he was hurt, and, while turning him over, was shot in the left hip.” Younger spoke to his friend, but he could see that he was dying. He unbuckled Miller’s cartridge belt and pulled it loose, knowing that he would soon need the extra pistols. Then he remounted and spurred his horse. Directly above, dentist Whiting observed from the head of the staircase. “The fight was becoming hot,” he recalled, “not so many shots were being fired, but there was a more evident purpose to shoot to kill.” He had no difficulty identifying the man in charge: it was the hulking Cole Younger, still thundering up and down the street as the others collected in front of the bank.78
At one point during the gun battle, Nellie Ames drove her light, four-wheeled carriage up a side street from Water toward Division. She saw Bunker staggering along, holding one hand to his shoulder. “What’s the matter, Mr. Bunker?” she asked. “I’m shot,” he replied, and continued on his way. Another man ran toward her. “Mrs. Ames,” he said in alarm, “get out of that carriage quick. You’ll be killed.”
As she stepped to the ground, she looked up and saw men on horseback, firing rapidly. The noise seemed to be attracting a stream of men that poured out of a basement saloon between her position and Division Street, men who quickly scattered as they realized what was going on. One of the horsemen reined in and looked straight at her. “Lady,” he said, “get off the street or you will be killed.” Then he turned to the last man coming out of the saloon, who was obviously drunk, and shot him. “His command, accompanied by the shot fired, fixed my attention upon him,” she stated later, “and as soon as their photographs appeared, I at once confidently recognized Coleman Younger.” At least two others would also identify him as the man who shot the bystander. The victim was Nicolaus Gustavson, a Swedish immigrant who spoke no English; badly wounded by a bullet to the head, he would die not many days later. Mrs. Ames went into a panic, shouting, “Oh John! John! Where’s John! Oh, I want John!”79
Back on Division Street, the citizens of the town were acting with increasing focus and determination. Bates, discovering that his shotgun would not fire, seized a pistol and ran back to his store entrance. The weapon was unloaded, but he aimed it anyway to draw the bandits’ fire, shouting, “Now I’ve got you!” Each time he did so a bullet would crash through the plate glass or rip into the door frame; one of them grazed his face. A man named J. B. Hyde blasted away with a double-barreled shotgun. Elias Hobbs, the town marshal, found himself unarmed—so he began to throw rocks. And across the street, on the square down toward the river, A. R. Manning seized a Remington rifle and ran across the front of Lee & Hitchcock’s. With the crack of gunshots echoing, with smoke drifting across Division Street, he poked his head around the staircase.80
At that moment, Adelbert Ames was marching swiftly across the bridge. A few minutes earlier, a messenger had appeared at the mill, speaking breathlessly of the raid. Ames had stepped to the door and heard the rising swell of gunfire across the river. Then the old soldier acted as he had at Fredericksburg and Fort Fisher—he went straight toward the sound of the guns. For a man who had spent countless hours in battle, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Weaponless but curious, the man whom Jesse James had come to rob strode across the square to Lee & Hitchcock’s. He saw people hiding behind buildings all along the street, either cowering for safety or firing down Division. He saw a man at the corner with a rifle, crouched down at the foot of the staircase, and recognized him as Manning, the hardware-store owner. Ames walked up behind him, and the two men peered around the corner.81
When Ames and Manning looked down Division toward the bank, the gunmen outside were still mounted, galloping up and down the street, shooting and shouting. Then Miller fell from his horse, and Cole jumped down and ran over to him. Manning raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired. Ames noticed that the merchant’s hands were trembling. The former general spoke to him confidently and reassuringly, as he had to his artillery battery at Malvern Hill and his infantrymen at Gettysburg. With gunshots echoing and smoke drifting over the street, Manning aimed down the block at a bandit who clung to his horse’s neck, using the animal for cover in the style favored by Indian warriors. He fired, and Bill Chadwell—or William Stiles, as he was known here in his native state—fell to the ground, dead.82
With Miller and Chadwell down, the three Younger brothers consolidated their position in front of the bank. They clicked through their revolvers’ cylinders, firing at the plate-glass windows that lined the far side of the street as incoming bullets and buckshot smacked into the dirt and masonry around them. Bob and Jim dismounted and crouched behind one of their horses, using it for cover.* The animal suddenly staggered and fell.
The two Youngers turned and saw Manning holding a smoking rifle. They immediately fired, forcing him—and Ames—to pull back behind the staircase. Then a dance began: the merchant would slip out, squeeze off a round, then jump back to safety to avoid the brothers’ bullets.
The duel infuriated the wounded Cole. “Charge up on him!” he ordered as he returned fire at the windows and storefronts across the street. His brothers, however, continued the game of duck-and-shoot. “Shoot through the stairs!” he shouted. Finally Bob responded. He raised the pistol in his right hand and began to blast holes in the wooden steps and slats that shielded Manning and Ames.83
At the very moment when Bob began to fire, Henry Wheeler returned to his position at the second-story window of the Dampier Hotel. After firing his only two bullets, he had run to find more ammunition. Now he rejoined the battle just at the moment when he was needed most. As he angled his carbine toward the street below, he heard a cry of warning rise from the ground. In response, Manning and Ames pulled back behind the corner of the Scriver building, just escaping the rounds that splintered through the stairs. Wheeler squinted down the barrel of his rifle at the gunman and pulled the trigger—a little too low, he thought, believing he had hit the man in the leg. In fact, the bullet shattered Bob Younger’s right elbow. Bob switched his revolver to his left hand, letting his wounded limb hang uselessly at his side.84
Only a few minutes had passed, yet Cole already realized that the outlaws had been defeated. In later years, he would come up with excuses for the catastrophe that he now faced on Division Street: the men who went into the bank were drunk, he would say, or they violated the plan by going in despite the large crowd on the street.85 At this moment, however, he would have seen the truth. The bandits’ main advantages were surprise and intimidation. Over the years, however, their very success had prepared the public for the possibility of a bank robbery. When this one began, the citizens jumped to the correct conclusion. And by driving everyone inside, the outlaws simply forced their foes to take cover, allowing them to fire from protected positions. Now they found themselves in a tactical trap. Exposed along a bare masonry wall, they were caught in Manning’s crossfire and dominated by Wheeler’s second-story perch. Cole knew what had to be done. He galloped furiously up to the bank door and kicked it in. “The game is up,” he shouted inside. “We are beaten.”86
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