On September 7, 1876, Cole Younger rode into Northfield, Minnesota, with a gang of eight desperadoes, intent on robbing the First National Bank. The robbery went catastrophically wrong from the start. The gang failed to open the bank’s safe, and the townspeople fought back with gunfire. Eight outlaws entered Northfield, but only six made it out alive.
Within days, four of those six were either dead or in prison. Only Jesse James and his brother Frank escaped, launching what many consider the greatest manhunt in American history. Cole Younger was no stranger to violence. By the time of his death, doctors found fourteen bullets still lodged in his body, not counting those that surgeons had already removed over the years.
Cole himself claimed he had been shot twenty times in his lifetime. He would also spend twenty-five years in prison. Despite all of that, he lived to be an old man. The James-Younger gang had been riding together for years, a loose band of former Confederate guerrillas who had turned to bank and train robbery after the Civil War.
Their experience as bushwhackers had taught them how to evade pursuit, and they would need every bit of that skill in the desperate days following Northfield. As the surviving outlaws fled the town, they made for the hamlet of Dundas, where the locals had not yet heard of the robbery attempt. The owner of the hardware store pegged the bandits as drunken loafers, and he and a traveling salesman began mocking them, joking that they looked like they had been running from Sitting Bull. In a blur of movement, one of the robbers drew his pistol, pointed it at the salesman, and snarled, “Get in the store you son of a bitch.
” The gang was in no mood for small talk. Leaving Dundas, the outlaws pistol-whipped a farmer to steal his draft horse after Bob Younger’s mount was shot in Northfield. Bob was in terrible shape, his elbow shattered by a bullet, and he had lost so much blood that he had begun fainting and falling from his saddle. In the town of Shieldsville, a posse was waiting in a saloon, but they left their guns unloaded and unguarded outside.
When they stumbled out to confront the gang, they found themselves staring down drawn revolvers. The outlaws shot up the town’s water pump and rode off, but not before accidentally grazing a young girl with a bullet. A second posse chased the gang out of Shieldsville, and in the running gunfight that followed, Cole was shot in his “crazy bone. ” Bob took another tumble from the saddle but managed to climb up behind Cole, and they rode on together.
Throughout the escape, the outlaws struggled with their stolen horses. Many of the animals in the Minnesota countryside were heavy draft horses, used to pulling wagons, not carrying riders at speed. This slowed the gang considerably in the early stages of their flight. That evening, they found refuge at a farm, but sleep did not come easily.
At least two hundred volunteers were combing the countryside, a number that would more than double in the days to come. The governor of Minnesota issued a bounty of $1,500 per outlaw, which doubled a week later to $3,000. Telegraph operators manned their stations around the clock. The noose was tightening.
They rode out early the next morning and exchanged gunfire with a posse while crossing the Cannon River. Once on the other side, they stole two more horses and took a farmer’s son as a hostage. They did not hurt the boy, and he later stated that the bandits were mild-mannered and well behaved, except when they drew their revolvers. By September 9, they abandoned their horses entirely and continued on foot, scavenging whatever food they could find in the forest.
Their experience as bushwhackers proved invaluable. They traveled through streams to hide their tracks, jumped from rock to rock, and walked single file in each other’s footsteps to confuse their pursuers. But they were still human, wounded, soaked by a cold drizzling rain, and without shelter beyond a few rubber-coated blankets. They pushed south, camping north of Marysburg before reaching Madison Lake.
From there they hiked through the night to an abandoned house a few miles outside of Mankato, where they stayed for three days, tending to their wounds and trying to stay dry. When they emerged, they were almost immediately spotted by a farmer. According to Cole, the gang debated what to do with him. Some wanted to kill him on the theory that dead men tell no tales, while others urged binding him and leaving him in the woods.
Finally they administered an oath, forcing the man to promise not to betray their whereabouts until they had time to make their escape. No sooner was he released than he hurried into Mankato and announced their presence. They marched on through the night, crossing the Blue Earth River around two in the morning. After stealing some chickens, they walked another three miles before cooking what was likely their first real meal in days.
Before they could enjoy it, another posse approached, and they fled into the brush, leaving the food and several pieces of clothing behind. On September 14, a full week after the botched robbery, the gang decided to split up. Cole stayed with his brothers and Charlie Pitts as Jesse and Frank went off on their own. Cole later stated that the decision was made with the knowledge and consent of the others.
Given Bob’s injuries, it likely seemed the best course. Cole and Jim would not abandon their brother, and Pitts apparently decided to stick with them as well. Jesse and Frank stole a horse and rode double through the night, until they hit a picket line near Lake Crystal. A guard spotted them and opened fire with a scattergun, blowing them both out of the saddle.
The spray of pellets caught Frank in the right foot and Jesse in the right knee. One of the brothers was struck in the side, and Jesse had his hat blown off. Despite their fresh wounds, they pressed on and stole two more horses that morning from a Baptist minister. Legend claims the preacher was waiting for them with a shotgun and was pistol-whipped, but historians dispute whether that part actually happened.
Meanwhile, the Youngers and Charlie Pitts remained on foot. Minnesota had become their living hell. They were wounded, soaking wet, freezing, exhausted, and half starved. Cole was reduced to walking with a makeshift cane, not only because of the bullet he took to the leg in Northfield, but because his toenails had fallen off from marching so long in wet riding boots.
Cole later said that his toes caused him the most pain of all his injuries. Bob was even worse off. He had lost so much blood that he could not straighten his right arm or control his fingers. On September 21, they approached a farm looking for food, an action Bob would later describe as “very imprudent,” adding, “but we were so fearfully hungry.
” They were spotted and surrounded by a posse. After a brief gunfight, Bob hollered out that he wanted to surrender, saying his companions were either dead or shot all to pieces. Cole tried to keep fighting, even offering to take on two of the posse’s best men at once, claiming he had been dogged for two weeks in the rain without food but could still lick any two of them. When Bob tried to talk him down, Cole said he did not care if they hanged him, that he would just as soon hang today as tomorrow.
Cole had been hit in the leg at Northfield, then in the funny bone during the chase. In the final fight, he took a load of buckshot to his left side, a rifle ball under his right eye, four bullets in his back, one in his arm, and possibly another behind his left armpit. Jim Younger was shot in the face, the bullet knocking out several of his teeth before lodging in the roof of his mouth. Bob was shot through the lung.
When he went to surrender, one of the deputies shot him again under his right arm. Charlie Pitts had urged Cole to run as soon as they spotted the posse, but Cole replied, “Sam, if you want to go out and surrender, go on, but this is where Cole Younger dies. ” Pitts stayed. Moments later, the sheriff drilled him through the heart.
The surviving Youngers were hauled to Madelia in the back of a wagon, greeted by a throng of onlookers. Jim, with blood still streaming down his face, waved his hat to the crowd. Cole struggled to his feet and took a bow. An eyewitness later said that Cole may have been an outlaw, but many that day admired his nerve, for he was a man who could take it on the chin and still smile.
When a lynch mob arrived that night, Cole told the sheriff not to risk anyone’s life for them, asking instead for their pistols so they could make a fight of it. Fortunately, the mob dispersed. The Youngers pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life in prison. Bob died there at Stillwater Prison in 1889 from tuberculosis.
After twenty-five years behind bars, Cole and Jim were paroled in 1901. Jim found work at a cigar shop and met a young woman, but he could not marry without the governor’s permission, which was denied. In October 1902, Jim put a small revolver to his head and ended his life. Cole received a full pardon after Jim’s death and returned to Missouri.
He wrote his memoirs, toured the country giving lectures, and even starred in his own Wild West show. In 1912, he found religion and was baptized. Two years later, at the age of seventy-two, Cole Younger died and was buried beside his brothers. Jesse and Frank James, however, were far from finished.
They crossed into Dakota Territory, and later into Iowa, stealing horses and trading them whenever they could. They fought off small skirmishes with posses and even robbed a doctor of his clothing, leaving their own ragged, bullet-ridden garments in return. By the end of September, they had vanished. Some claimed they rode west through Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma before swinging back into Missouri.
Others said they traveled deep into Arizona before turning east. Whatever route they took, they made it back to their mother’s farm in Clay County, Missouri, with at least one close call with Sheriff Groom, whom they taunted as cowards as they slipped away. Their enemies celebrated the end of the infamous James-Younger gang. The St.
Louis Globe proclaimed the breakup of the band “the most important event which has happened in the criminal history of this country. ” But Jesse and Frank were not done yet, and they would continue their outlaw career for years to come.