Northfield

by Johnny D. Boggs

  It was some ride, and I felt like a bona-fide hero till Nutmeg slipped in the mud and sent me over his neck and into a puddle. Luckily nobody saw my wreck, and Nutmeg wasn’t the type of horse who would wander off without me. I caught up with him, wanted to cuss him, but just wiped the thick slime off my face and hands, pulled myself back onto the buckskin’s back. Two miles later, I struck town, pulling the hackamore to stop my horse in front of the first man I saw.

  “Robbers!” I cried out. “I’ve seen the Northfield robbers!”

  The townsman looked at me from underneath his spectacles, chewing on a toothpick. Guess I didn’t meet his expectations of a real sentry, what with me on a farm horse, muddy blanket for a saddle, hackamore instead of headstall, bit, and reins, and me in my farm clothes now caked with mud.

  “Boy, I got no time for your foolishness.” He turned to go, but I yelled that I was telling the truth.

  “How many?” he asked, still unconvinced.

  “Four,” I said.

  “Newspapers and Sheriff Glispin say eight or nine men are on the dodge.”

  “Well, all I saw was four.”

  “If you’re fibbing, I’ll whup you even before your pa does.”

  “I ain’t lyin’!”

  “You know anybody in town? Anybody who can vouch for you?”

  “John Owen knows my Pa,” I told him.

  “You wait here,” he said, but took his time making his way to Mr. Owen’s store.

  That’s when I spied the Flanders Hotel, and, remembering Colonel Vought, I kicked a worn-out Nutmeg into a walk down Buck Street, slid off the blanket, and tethered my horse to one of the skinny trees in front of the porch. The way my luck had started to turn, I figured the colonel would still be hiding in the woods by the bridge over toward our farm, but my heart about leaped into my throat when I saw him eating breakfast with another man.

  I ran up to his table. “I found them bandits!” I cried out.

  He looked up, chewing his ham, winked at his companion, and said to me: “What did you do with them?”

  He didn’t believe me, neither, darn him. “They’re still there. Four of ’em. Came by my house this mornin’.”

  “That’s a big haul.” He winked again, which I found mighty bothersome, and reached for his coffee. “Have you had breakfast, son?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SHERIFF JAMES GLISPIN

  To me way of thinking, the James and Younger boys, or whoever had robbed the Northfield bank, had escaped. Sweet Mary, but I hoped they had, or at least out of Watowan County they’d stay The year 1876 found me in me third term as county sheriff, and in me jurisdiction, I liked things quiet. A six-shooter I carried, the county bought me a couple of shotguns, a Henry .44 and Spencer carbine, and above the door at me home hung the Springfield rifle I’d shouldered during the war. But I didn’t want to use them in the line of duty, not ever.

  In the war, I’d seen enough killing, wholesale slaughter. Death eats at a man’s soul, and a horrible amount I’d seen during those awful four years, seen me friends die by the score, and had lost count of the number of brave Southern boys who’d fallen at me hand.

  Enough I’d seen in the East, so West I came, settling here in Watowan County. ’Tis quieter than Massachusetts. Nothing but lads of the soil and real nice colleens. As a lawman, I’d have to break up fisticuffs once in a blue moon, but most of me such noble duties involved hauling off dead animals and collecting taxes. That changed after the 7th of September.

  For two weeks, I’d ridden all over the county, chasing rumors and fairies, chasing the wind, looking for those desperate men who’d robbed the Northfield bank. For two weeks, I’d ridden in the rain till a tadpole I felt I’d become. Now that the sun had come out, I hoped to dry out and rest, prayed those bad men were long past me county.

  ’Twas the 21st of September, and I’d just finished breakfast and started making me way down the boardwalk to the livery by the Flanders Hotel, when Colonel Vought stepped outside, holding his rifle, followed by a corn-fed boy covered in dried mud.

  “Jim,” the colonel said, “this boy says four men came by his farm this morning. He thinks they’re the Northfield bandits.”

  A good look-see I gave the child. “What’s ye name, boy?”

  “A.O. Sorbel. Well, Asle Oscar, but most folks call me A.O.”

  “Ye be Ole and Guri’s boy, aren’t ye?”

  “Yes, sir. I rode my horse all the way from the farm,” he continued. “Two men were walking down the road while Pa was milking Henrietta. They were filthy, in rags, and I looked at their boot prints after they walked on. Boots were worn to a frazzle, Sheriff. I could see the toes prints they was so bad off.”

  “Two men?” I asked.

  “That’s right. But while I was gone trailing them, two others come by the farm, said they was hunters, but one had to walk on a cane and the other had a bum right arm. That’s what Pa and Ma told me. They asked to pay for breakfast, but when Ma told them they’d have to wait, they said they needed to get along, so Ma gave them some bread.”

  Colonel Vought added: “I had my doubts, but the boy’s persuaded me that these men are the fiends we seek.”

  “Just four men?” I asked.

  “That’s all we saw.”

  Well, fine Christian folks were Guri and Ole Sorbel, tillers of the soil, like me own father had been back in County Cork, and I don’t think their son would ride all the way to town to tell some stretcher. Now, the Sorbel farm lay over in Brown County, not officially me jurisdiction, but I decided the devil with boundaries. They were close enough to Watowan County. To St. James I ordered me deputy, told him to send as many riders as he could round up to the Sorbel farm, then asked another lad to warn all the crews working the threshing machines, to tell them to unhitch their teams and make for open country. The last thing I wanted was innocent people getting shot, and I figured those outlaws would be desperate for horses, especially when they found out we were after them.

  By then, Cap Murphy had ridden up in his buckboard with his little boy, probably coming for breakfast, and I’d sure want Cap along in a fight, even though I prayed it wouldn’t come to that. I’d want Colonel Vought along, too.

  Cap told his boy to wait in the hotel, and then we went running everywhere, to saddle our horses, to fetch our guns. Young Sorbel told Doc Overholt that he could ride his horse, and the kid and Cap Murphy climbed into the wagon. To the farm we dashed, me, Colonel Vought, Cap Murphy, the Sorbel boy, Doc Overholt, Will Estes, and Big Jim Severson.

  By the time we reached Ole Sorbel’s place, his cows had practically wiped out all the sign, but A.O. said he knew which way the strangers had gone. His mother didn’t want the lad to come along with us, but I promised to keep him safe, that he’d do nothing more than lead our way and hold our horses if to a fight it came. That didn’t settle Guri’s nerves anyway, and she went inside, wailing like a banshee.

  Not long after that, Charles Pomeroy Jr. and George Bradford rode in from Madelia, and Ben Rice and G.S. Thompson, both of St. James, met up with us, too. We left the farm, letting young A.O. Sorbel show us the way. If Sorbel wasn’t mistaken, the four men were traveling southwest.

  The alarm had spread, and another bunch of riders from Madelia and St. James we met. Mayor Strait of St. Peter also rode up with news that the Army had practically a company in the field after the outlaws. Our own army on the Madelia road kept growing.

  We split up, Mayor Strait taking his party one way, and me leading mine toward Lake Hanska. Me heart pounded, and I found meself sweating like a man laid up with fever. I wanted to make sure these four men didn’t slip from our grasp, so that meant catching them before sundown would be our best hope. More importantly, I didn’t want to wind up killing or wounding four innocent tramps.

  Enough innocent blood had been shed in Minnesota that month.

  Across the fields we galloped, over roads, through fields and forests, and, as we neared the Watowan River country, I saw the
m. Four men, working their way across Hanska Slough.

  “Hold up there!” I shouted.

  They made it across, climbed out of the water, and toward the woods they bolted, though they did not make good time. Tired, I’d say they were, exhausted, limping badly the lot of them.

  Severson and Doc Overholt opened fire.

  “They’re out of range!” I shouted.

  Doc didn’t listen, got off the Sorbel horse, handing young A.O. the hackamore, and squatted in the mud. He carried a Sharps rifle, one of those weapons the snakes-in-the-grass used during the war, now popular among the buffalo hiders, and squeezed off a round. By thunder if his bullet didn’t snap the cane one of the fugitives was using, spilling the man with a curse. Another helped him up, practically carrying him to the woods.

  “Stop and surrender!” I yelled. “I’m sheriff of Watowan County!”

  This time, they fired back before into the thicket they vanished.

  Woods around Hanska be thick, daunting, providing plenty of cover, and a tough time we’d have getting through all those bogs and streams.

  “We must go slowly,” Cap Murphy said from his wagon seat, “but with resolve.”

  “And keep them afoot,” I said. “Don’t let them take any horses. Kill the horse if ye must.”

  I’d rather see a horse dead than another man.

  Four farmers, armed with shotguns, joined us, and glad I was to have them. Other groups rendezvoused with us till our number totaled sixteen. Sixteen against four, but those four, if indeed the guilty party, were killers, veterans at this kind of fight. I had a posse of store clerks and farmers, mostly, though some veterans of the war, including Cap Murphy.

  Yet soon I spied other mounted men in the distance, and I dispatched Doc Overholt to intercept those troopers, to have them surround the thicket in which the lads hid.

  Cautiously we closed in on our prey.

  “What do you want?” called a ragged voice from the brambles.

  “Throw up ye hands and surrender,” I replied, ducking as the bandit sent a shot in me direction. Not even aiming me Henry, I fired back, levered another round into the chamber, and the battle commenced.

  Too hot for us out in the clearing, I directed our men to retreat and take shelter in the woods. There we gathered, regrouping, ready to formulate a final battle plan.

  By now, I had no doubts that these four men were part of the Northfield gang.

  Nor did Cap Murphy, who leaped down from his wagon, with A.O. Sorbel right behind him, taking cover in the sumac and ash. Taking charge Murphy did, and I let him. At this kind of thing, Cap Murphy had a lot more experience than me.

  “Let’s go get ’em,” Murphy said. “Aim low, but shoot to kill for they’ll kill you if they can.”

  “We’ve got them practically surrounded,” Willis Bundy said. “Why not keep them here, have a siege? Starve them out?”

  “I have no patience for that,” Murphy said. “I’m walkin’ right in there. Who’s coming with me?”

  During the war, charges I’d seen, took part in me share, but let me tell ye something…what Cap Murphy suggested would turn even the bravest lad’s stomach. This wasn’t open ground we’d be charging through. We’d fight our way through brambles and briars and brush thicker than Cap Murphy’s beard—against well-hidden man-killers facing a noose if captured alive.

  I’m an Irishman, a Massachusetts man by birth, who sold farming equipment before pinning on a badge. I’d rather fight with me fists than with me gun, and I sure had no longing to commit suicide, but these farmers and merchants and friends had elected me sheriff, and though enough killing I’d seen, knew me duty I did. I stepped forward.

  A.O. Sorbel, bless his heart, volunteered next, grabbing Ben Rice’s Winchester, but Rice, a Southerner by birth who’d spent most of his years in Minnesota, and had won more turkey shooting contests than anyone in St. James, pulled the gun away from the kid and tousled Sorbel’s dirty hair. “Brave boy, but mind your business and hold the horses,” Rice said, “like we promised your mother you’d do.”

  “Dang it,” A.O. started, but I told the boy to hush and do as he was told.

  Charles Pomeroy, a New Yorker who’d fought in the Sioux scare back in ’62, and George Bradford, who taught school in the winter and farmed during the summer, said they’d go. So did short, fat Jim Severson, who clerked in town when he wasn’t courting some lady or making a joke. Big Jim cocked his rifle and said: “This should make Miss Hildegard take a shine to me.”

  We waited for others, but none of the ten stepped forward.

  “Six,” Cap Murphy said, “should be enough.”

  “Seven’s better,” Colonel Vought said at last, and stepped into the clearing, heading to the thicket.

  Cap Murphy called out directions as he thumbed back the hammer on his rifle. “Keep fifteen feet apart,” he said, “just keep walkin’ right at ’em. When you see ’em, holler at ’em to surrender. If they shoot, shoot ’em. Shoot to kill, boys, and keep on shootin’ till they surrender or are all dead. Or we are.”

  Our rifle barrels became machetes as we slashed our way through the brush, drowning out the noise of the bubbling water, of the singing birds, and I cringed at the noise we made approaching four bad men.

  Sweat streaked down me face, and breathing became difficult. Fear? Certainly. During the war, never had I entered a battle when fear had not practically consumed me, but I understood that once the first shot was fired, instincts would take over, a will to survive, a duty, a knowledge of the job at hand.

  We have them surrounded, I kept telling meself. Perhaps they will surrender.

  I knew they wouldn’t. A fight unto the death this would become.

  At that instant, a bearded man leaped just a few rods ahead of me, a snarl on his lips and six-shooter in his hand, pointed at me head. Out of the revolver’s cavernous bore belched smoke and flame.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  BOB YOUNGER

  “This is all my fault,” I told my brothers, tears cascading, unashamedly, down my cheeks.

  I’d wind up getting Jim and Cole killed, Jim and Cole, the best older brothers a man could want. They had tried to talk me out of riding north with Jesse, but I hadn’t listened. I’d been the fool, forgetting my family, forgetting how wise older brothers are. Now, it had come to this.

  Jim and Cole, and Charlie Pitts, would die. Die like animals trapped in a thick forest. Die in a damned Northern state. Die because of me.

  I’d die, too. Far from Maggie, my girl, and her son, who I’d prayed I’d soon raise as my own. Far from my sisters, far from Lee’s Summit, Missouri. I’d die for nothing, too. For $26 and 40¢. Die because of my own damned arrogance.

  “Hush up,” said Cole, squatting beside me. “This ain’t your fault, Bob. Ain’t nobody’s…’cept mine.” The last two words came out as a whisper. “How you holdin’ up, Bob?” he asked again, and tried to smile.

  “Arm still hurts like blazes,” I said. “But you give me a gun and I’ll fight alongside you, Cole.”

  “You’d do us better was you to reload for us. Think you can handle that chore, Bob?” My head bobbed slightly, and my brother dumped some cartridges between my legs, along with a pair of pistols. We started reloading together, while Brother Jim and Charlie Pitts crawled about to scout out our situation.

  I already knew our situation.

  Hopeless.

  I thought about what had brought me here. It was all for Maggie. She was a Yankee, and a widow, having moved from New England after her husband passed away from fever, and took up farming just over the Jackson County line. The most beautiful woman I ever met, and, Yankee blood or no, she captured my heart, which hadn’t put up much of a fight. She helped me get through the hard times when those damned detectives shot Brother John dead back in ’74. Her boy Jeremy, he was a strapping young fellow, and me and him got along just fine. Yes, Maggie was always there for me, and she said she’d marry me if I’d quit being an outlaw.

/>   Which had always been my intention. Truth be told, I really wasn’t an outlaw, not in my eye, when I first fell in love with Maggie. I was a farmer, an honest one, who just happened to be named Younger. Now Jim, he loved being a cowboy, and Cole liked debating religion and politics or dancing and having a good time, and working cattle, too, but I guess I had more of Pa in me than anything else. Farming. That’s all I really wanted to do, and it’s what I would have done if those Yankees had left me alone, if they hadn’t killed my father, drove my ma to her grave, and murdered John.

  We were Youngers, and the law would hunt us down just because of our name. They didn’t give a tinker’s damn if I was a farmer, if I’d never popped a cap on anyone, if I’d never robbed a bank or train, if I’d done nothing except live a honest life, which I had, at first. They’d never let me be, so that’s why I joined up with Jesse. That’s why I became an outlaw. That’s why I robbed the train in Muncie, Kansas, with Frank and Jesse, Cole and Clell. Maybe, I figured, if I could get that farm up and running, get myself out of debt, maybe that would make things easier, make Maggie understand. She’d become my wife.

  After the Muncie case, I had leased farmland down around Greenwood—had to make up a name to do it—but things remained hard, and wasn’t long before I needed more cash, which was a hard crop to raise in Missouri after the war. Maybe if I could haul in enough cash, I could buy that farm, be my own man, even if I had to use another fellow’s name. I needed money again, for me, and Maggie and Jeremy. So I started paying Jesse these visits, and, well, to hear Jesse and Bill Chadwell— no, Stiles was his real name, Bill Stiles—talk, the streets of Minnesota were paved with gold. Greed, I guess, greed and love had brought me here.

  Brought me here to die.

  Charlie Pitts came back, shaking his head. “Capt’n,” he told Cole, who busied himself thumbing shells into his Smith & Wesson, “they got us entirely surrounded. Best surrender. Ain’t no way out.”