The excitement that followed our sentence to state prison, which was popularly called “cheating the gallows,” resulted in the change of the law in that respect.
The following Saturday we pleaded guilty, and Judge Lord sentenced us to imprisonment for the remainder of our lives in the state prison at Stillwater, and a few days later we were taken there by Sheriff Barton.
With Bob it was a life sentence, for he died there of consumption Sept. 16, 1889. He was never strong physically after the shot pierced his lung in the last fight near Madelia.
Every blood-and-thunder history of the Younger brothers declares that Frank and Jesse James were the two members of the band that entered Northfield who escaped arrest or death.
They were not, however. One of those two men was killed afterward in Arizona and the other died from fever some years afterward.
There were reasons why the James and the Younger brothers could not take part in any such project as that at Northfield.
Frank James and I came together as soldiers some little time before the Lawrence raid. He was a good soldier, and while he never was higher than a private the distinctions between the officers and the men were not as finely drawn in Quantrell’s command as they are nowadays in military life. As far back as 1862, Frank James and I formed a friendship, which has existed to this day.
Jesse James I never met, as I have already related, until the early summer of 1866. The fact that all of us were liable to the visits of posses when least expected gave us one interest in common, the only one we ever did have, although we were thrown together more or less through my friendship with Frank James.
The beginning of my trouble with Jesse came in 1872, when George W. Shepherd returned to Lee’s Summit after serving a term in prison in Kentucky for the bank robbery at Russellville in 1868.
Jesse had told me that Shepherd was gunning for me, and accordingly one night, when Shepherd came late to the home of Silas Hudspeth, where I was, I was prepared for trouble, as in fact, I always was anyway.
When Shepherd called, Hudspeth shut the door again, and told me who was outside. I said “let him in,” and stepping to the door with my pistol in my hand, I said: