Jim Younger

Our faithful negro servant, "Aunt Suse," had been hung up in the barn in a
vain endeavor to make her reveal the whereabouts of my mother's sons and
money; my dead father's fortune had been stolen and scattered to the
winds; but our farms were left, and had I been given an opportunity to
till them in peace it would have saved four wasted lives.

In the summer of 1866 the governor of Kansas made a requisition on the
governor of Missouri for 300 men, naming them, who had taken part in the
attacks on Lawrence and other Kansas towns.

Attorneys in Independence had decided that they would defend, free of
charge, for any offense except murder, any of the Jackson county boys who
would give themselves up. No one did more than I to assemble the boys at
Blue Springs for a meeting to consider such course.

It was while at this that I saw Jesse James for the first time in my life,
so that sets at rest all the wild stories that have been told about our
meeting as boys and joining Quantrell. Frank James and I had seen service
together, and Frank was a good soldier, too. Jesse, however, did not
enter the service until after I had gone South in the fall of 1863, and
when I saw him early in the summer of 1866 he was still suffering from the
shot through the lung he had received in the last battle in Johnson county
in May, 1865.

[Illustration: Jesse James and Frank James]

Jesse James (top) and Frank James (bottom)

The spectre of Paola now rose to haunt me. Although all the guerrillas
knew who had killed young Judy, his father had secured my indictment in
Kansas on the charge of murdering his son. Judy, who had returned to
Missouri as the appointed sheriff of Cass county, had a posse prepared to
serve a writ for me in its usual way--a night visit and then the pistol or
the rope.

I consulted with old ex-Governor King at Richmond, who had two sons in the
Federal army, one of whom I had captured during the war, although he did
not know it at the time, and with Judge Tutt of this district.

Judge Tutt said there was no sheriff in this vicinity who would draw a
jury that would give me a fair trial. If I should so make oath he, as
judge, would appoint a jury commissioner who would summon a jury that
would give me a fair trial, but he was confident that as soon as he did so
mob law would be invoked before I could go to trial.

One man had been taken from t