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the stallion and shaken hands with a balding feller in a green and black checkered suit, giving him a couple of aliases.
    “Fancy rigs.” Mr. Hall nodded at our saddles.
    “I like to be comfortable,” Jim said, “when purchasing grain all over Freeborn County.”
    “You two gents dealers?”
    Nosy fellow, I thought, but allowed Jim to palaver with him.
    “Out of Chicago. Just got into town. My partner and I, newly employed with Abbott Flour, will be visiting farms throughout the county You might be able to guide us in the right direction.”
    “Might,” Mr. Hall said.
    “And you might also be able to give us your rock-bottom price on that sore-legged piece of glue bait.” He tilted his head at the thoroughbred.
    Mr. Hall, he let out a belly laugh. “You sure you’re not a horse trader?”
    Jim give him an easy smile. “I’m a speculator, Friend Hall, in many things.”
    “Well, why don’t you speculate on this…you won’t find a better horse between Duluth and Omaha. If you want something sore-legged or bound for the glue factory, I’ll direct you to Balch’s Wagon Shop. A.J. doesn’t do much horse trading, but, on occasion, someone swindles him with a lame horse. But this prime example of horseflesh, well, he’s only four years old and I wouldn’t lead him down the ramp for anything short of two hundred dollars.”
    “That’s funny,” Jim said, “I was thinking more along the lines of fourteen years and twenty dollars.”
    Well, that’s how things went. Jim Younger, he knew horses, but so did that Mr. Hall, and they wound up agreeing on $110. Over the next three days, we bought eight horses, three good ones plus the fine blood bay, along with four others we figured we’d do some trading for. Me and Jim also bought a spring wagon from a Dutchy named Drommerhausen at a carriage shop over on Clark Street, a-putting two of Mr. Hall’s least reliable horses in harness.
    By and by, the boys come along and joined up with us—Cole first, then Charlie Pitts and Bob Younger, finally Chadwell, Frank, and Dingus. We scouted about around Freeborn County, over around Mansfield Township. Albert Lea was right close to the Iowa border, but the bank didn’t look fat with cash, and, besides, wasn’t many of us so jo-fired to rob a bank right at the get-go, Jim and Cole a-being the exceptions. Dingus, he wanted to do some consorting in Minneapolis and St. Paul, but Frank deemed it wise to get these “reliable” Albert Lea horses accustomed to our ways before a-getting too comfortable in Minnesota.
    It always amuses me when I read them newspaper articles about us bushwhackers or hear paper-collar men speculate on us outlaws at some tonsorial parlor. Lots of folk figured it was Frank James who called all the shots, others said Cole Younger could lead a handful of men through the gates of Hades, but most believed Dingus to be leader of the gang.
    Truth be told—weren’t no leader. Oh, we had our certain jobs during a robbery. Cole, he liked being an outside man, Dingus didn’t have no druthers, but Frank was more of the inside person. Like as not, he’d be one of the boys inside the bank because he was ready. He carried a Remington revolver like me, but he had carved out a notch in his holster—and it was a pretty rig, black, with a narrow shell belt and a mighty fancy brass buckle—so he could thumb back the hammer before that .44 cleared the leather.
    But the point I’m a-making, nobody really led us anywhere. We come as we pleased, did what we wanted, and fought like me and my brothers done oftentimes. I can’t tell you how many times I thought Dingus and Cole would come to blows, and since Rocky Cut, well, Bob had been a-treating his brothers like Yankees. Chadwell didn’t have much of a temper, but he and Frank, normally the peacekeeper amongst us, taken to each other like a match to gunpowder, while Charlie Pitts just sided with Cole and kept his mouth shut.
    Me? I found it kinda amusing. Hell, I