cted to the state
legislature. He had fourteen children, of whom five certainly were bad.
At one time he owned large bodies of land, and he was a prosperous
merchant in Harrisonville for some time. Cole Younger was born January
15, 1844, John in 1846, Bruce in 1848, James in 1850, and Bob in 1853.
As these boys grew old enough, they joined the Quantrell bands, and
their careers were precisely the same as those of the James boys. The
cause of their choice of sides was the same. Jennison, the Kansas
jayhawker leader, in one of his raids into Missouri, burned the houses
of Younger and confiscated the horses in his livery stables. After that
the boys of the family swore revenge.

At the close of the war, the Younger and James boys worked together very
often, and were leaders of a band which had a cave in Clay county and
numberless farm houses where they could expect shelter in need. With
them, part of the time, were George and Ollie Shepherd; other members of
their band were Bud Singleton, Bob Moore, Clel Miller and his brother,
Arthur McCoy; others who came and went from time to time were regularly
connected with the bigger operations. It would be wearisome to recount
the long list of crimes these men committed for ten or fifteen years
after the war. They certainly brought notoriety to their country. They
had the entire press of America reproaching the State of Missouri; they
had the governors of that state and two or three others at their wits'
end; they had the best forces of the large city detective agencies
completely baffled. They killed two detectives--one of whom, however,
killed John Younger before he died--and executed another in cold blood
under circumstances of repellant brutality. They raided over Missouri,
Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, even as far east as West Virginia, as far
north as Minnesota, as far south as Texas and even old Mexico. They
looted dozens of banks, and held up as many railway passenger trains and
as many stage coaches and travelers as they liked. The James boys alone
are known to have taken in their robberies $275,000, and, including the
unlawful gains of their colleagues, the Youngers, no doubt they could
have accounted for over half a million dollars. They laughed at the law,
defied the state and county governments, and rode as they liked, here,
there, and everywhere, until the name of law in the West was a mockery.
If magnitude in crime be claim to distinction, they might ask the title,
fo