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Northfield, Minnesota

The Pinkertons' increasing harassment of friends, neighbors and relatives of the James boys - as well as of the Younger brothers - helped bring the gang to a fateful turning point: they decided to expand their operations farther afield. In August 1876, Jesse, Frank and the three Youngers - Cole, Jim and Bob - boarded a train for Minnesota, some 370 miles from Clay County, and farther north in Yankee country than the travelers had ever before ventured. Accompanying them were three outlaws: Clell Miller and Charlie Pitts - both veterans of Quantrill's guerrilla force - and a native Minnesotan, Bill Chadwell. Indeed, the idea for the trip had come from Chadwell, who had described his home state's banks with contagious enthusiasm.

In Minnesota the gang made a grand tour, mostly by rail, visiting at least 10 cities. They posed as a party of land speculators and cattle traders, a cover that enabled them to size up banks and explore routes of escape. But they were in no particular hurry; in St. Paul, Jesse took the boys to a brothel run by Mollie Ellsworth, who remembered him from earlier days in a St. Louis establishment, and the outlaws also visited a gambling house. They dropped $200 at the tables, but the loss was evidently no problem. Shopping around at several livery stables, they produced enough money to buy the best horses, saddles, bridles and bits they could find. Then the gang left the city in pairs, making a long, lazy horseback trip southward along the Minnesota River to the town of Mankato, a thriving county seat.

Jesse and three of the other outlaws rode into Mankato together. One of them visited the First National Bank and reported favorably on its prospects as a target. The bank was spared, however, by an unexpected turn of events. As Jesse rode down the main street, a laborer who had once lived in Missouri hailed him. "Hallo, Jesse, what are you doing up here?" he called. Jesse paused, and smiled. "Hell, man, I don't know you," he said, and - signaling his cohorts to follow him - rode on, leaving Mankato behind. Instead, the robbers made their way toward the town of Northfield - and the biggest shoot-out of their lives.

Cole Younger and Bill Chadwell went ahead to survey the situation. Asking around as to whether the town had any gun shops, they were told there were none. They then visited the town's two hardware stores and examined their meager stocks of weapons, took a quick look at the First National Bank, and departed. At a rendezvous that night at an inn outside of Northfield, the gang agreed that the time and place were right.

On the morning of September 7, 1876, the men set out for Northfield, trotting at a leisurely clip, clad in the linen dusters that cattlemen customarily wore. Jesse on a striking white-legged sorrel, and Bob Younger and Charlie Pitts on handsome bays, were the first to reach town. They dismounted in Mill Square, at the foot of a small iron bridge that spanned the Cannon River, and looked around. Dominating the far end of the square was a two-story stone building called the Scriver Block. One of the stores it housed, facing the square, was the big general merchandise firm of Lee & Hitchcock, its sign proclaiming "Good Goods Cheap!" Another Scriver Block tenant was the First National Bank; but only its small back door led to the square - the front entrance was around the corner on Division Street. The three outlaws walked around to the front of the bank and sur; veyed the places across the street from which trouble might come: Wheeler & Blackman's drugstore, a small hotel called the Dampier House and a row of commercial buildings.

Satisfied that Younger and Chadwell had not overlooked any potential hazards the day before, Jesse, Bob and Charlie repaired to J. G. Jeft's restaurant across the bridge. They ordered ham and eggs - four eggs per man - and lingered over the meal. Shortly after two in the afternoon they rode back across the bridge.

This time the three outlaws dismounted on Division Street, hitching their horses directly in front of the bank. For a few minutes they stood at the door; then, suddenly, three more horsemen came clattering over the bridge, through Mill Square and onto Division Street, shooting and whooping as they rounded the corner. From the opposite end of Division Street came two more horsemen, charging. As terrified bystanders scattered, Jesse, Bob and Charlie rushed into the bank, shouting "Throw up your hands!" The cashier, Joseph Heywood, and the clerks, A. E. Bunker and Frank Wilcox, turned to see the three climbing the counter with revolvers in hand. Heywood ran for the vault; Charlie reached it first. Heywood tried to slam the vault door shut on Pitts, but at that instant Jesse got there and spotted the safe inside.

"Open it," he demanded. "It has a time lock. It can't be opened," the cashier protested. "That's a damned lie," Jesse shouted, and with his revolver he struck Heywood to the floor.

Bob Younger, meanwhile, had ordered the two clerks to get down on their knees, demanding the whereabouts of the cash drawer. Bunker pointed to it. Then, while Younger examined the rolls of coins and loose bills in the till, Bunker made a dash for the bank's back door. Whirling from the vault, Charlie Pitts took a shot at him, missed, rushed to the door and fired again, winging Bunker as he raced down a stairway to the back alley.

At the front of the bank, on Division Street, the five mounted lookouts found themselves under unexpected fire. Their blazing six-shooters had failed to cow Northfield's citizens; despite the shortage of weapons, the townsfolk were putting up a stiff fight with a few rifles and shotguns hastily commandeered from the two hardware stores. One man, Elias Stacy, raced to Division Street and fired at Clell Miller. In the excitement Stacy had loaded his shotgun with light bird shot, but the blast knocked Miller from his horse. His face badly bleeding, the outlaw mounted again and charged.

It looked like certain death for Stacy, but young Henry Wheeler intervened. A medical student on vacation from the University of Michigan, Henry had been in his father's drugstore across from the bank when the shooting started. Remembering an old army carbine that was in the baggage room of the Dampier House next door, he ran into the hotel, found the gun and carried it into an upstairs front room. From there he saw Clell Miller riding hard at Stacy. Henry fired, and the outlaw again fell from his horse. Cole Younger galloped up, dismounted and spoke to him. Miller tried to raise himself on his arms, then rolled over, dead. Younger seized his cartridge belt and pistols and sped off.

In the midst of the shooting a Swedish immigrant, newly arrived in Northfield, blundered up Division Street toward the bank. One of the horsemen shouted at him to get out of the way; uncomprehending, the Swede plodded on and was shot through the head. Suddenly a single shot shattered the silence inside the bank. On the way out, Jesse had passed the cashier lying dazed on the floor. He abruptly turned back, put his revolver to the man's temple and blew his brains out.

As the robbers rushed out and mounted up, it was plain that the usual quick getaway was out of the question. Northfield's citizens were seeing to that. Elias Stacy had run up an outside stairway at the corner of the Scriver Block, ducked inside and, from a window on Division Street, was still blasting bird shot at the invaders. From the stairway itself, hardware merchant A. E. Manning leveled a Remington repeating rifle at Bill Chadwell as he rode down the street. Manning took aim - "as cool as though he was picking off a squirrel," one witness later said - and toppled Chadwell from his saddle with a bullet through the heart. Another shot from Manning's rifle hit Cole Younger in the shoulder at the same time young Henry Wheeler, firing from the hotel window, blew the hat off Cole's head.

By now the gunfire on Division Street had become general. Frank James was hit in the leg and Jim Younger in the face; blood gushed from his mouth. Still, the gang went on riding up and down the street, shooting into doors and windows. Bob Younger leaped from his horse, took cover behind it and aimed at merchant Manning on the Scriver Block stairway. Manning drew a bead on the head of the handsome bay and shot it down. Younger dodged behind a stack of boxes, but he was still in the view of Henry Wheeler in his perch upstairs at the Dampier House. Henry fired his carbine and hit Younger in the right thigh.

Suddenly an outlaw shouted, "We are beat, let's go!" Bob Younger limped out into the street, calling "Hold on, don't leave me! I'm shot!" Cole Younger wheeled back just as another Northfield man discharged a load of buckshot that shattered Bob's right elbow. Lifting Bob onto his own horse, Cole raced after his friends as they clattered across the Cannon River bridge.

In about 20 minutes, the people of Northfield had virtually destroyed the gang that had held the nation spellbound for a decade. Six of the eight robbers had escaped alive - but a further reckoning impended. After the shoot-out, telegrams alerted the entire state and hundreds of Minnesotans set out to finish the job Northfield had started. The outlaws were soon spotted riding through the nearby village of Dundas. Bob Younger had his shattered elbow in a sling. Jim Younger was bandaged about the mouth with strips torn from his linen duster. Frank James had tied a cloth around his leg.

With posses combing the woods, guards posted at bridges and mounted men patrolling the roads, the gang made only halting progress. Four days after the raid, when a posse flushed them from a wooded ravine, they had covered only 15 miles. Still, they held off their pursuers. After a few more days and several inconclusive skirmishes, they were reported in the Blue Earth Woods, heading for Mankato. At that point the gang split up. Jesse - who had come through the Northfield episode unhurt - took off with Frank late at night on a single horse, breaking through a line of armed pickets. One of the pickets fired a shot that passed through Frank's knee and lodged in Jesse's thigh. They rode on, stole two horses from a farmer and headed toward the Dakota Territory. Once, when they stopped for a meal at an isolated farmhouse, they were so stiff-legged that they were able to remount only by climbing a fence and sliding sideways onto their horses.

A few days after the James boys left, the Youngers and Charlie Pitts were trapped in a thicket of willows and plum trees near Madelia, about 25 miles east of Mankato. They fought on until only Bob Younger was left standing. Finally he cried out, "The boys are all shot to pieces. For God's sake, don't kill me!" Charlie Pitts was dead; all three Youngers were wounded. The brothers were taken into custody, certain that they would be lynched. They seemed almost grateful when a Minnesota judge sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Jesse and Frank James made it to the Dakota Territory; their trail vanished near Sioux Falls. There the fiasco of Northfield had an appropriate sequel. The James boys stole two horses from a farmer's yard. One of the horses was blind in one eye, the other blind in both eyes. Nevertheless the brothers escaped on them.

Paul Trachtman. The Old West: The Gunfighters. Time-Life Books Editors. Time-Life, 1974.

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