The end of the war also brought an end to armed resistance by the Guerrillas. As an organization, they never fought again. The most of them kept their weapons; and a few of them had great need to keep them. Some were killed because of the terrible renown won in the four years’ war; some were forced to hide themselves in the unknown of the outlying territories, and some were persecuted and driven into desperate defiance and resistance because they were human and intrepid. To this latter class the Jameses and Youngers belonged.
No men ever strove harder to put the past behind them. No men ever submitted more sincerely to the results of a war that had as many excesses on one side as on the other. No men ever went to work with a heartier good will to keep good faith with society and make themselves amenable to the law. No men ever sacrificed more for peace, and for the bare privilege of doing just as hundreds like them had done—the privilege of going back again into the obscurity of civil life and becoming again a part of the enterprising economy of the commonwealth. They were not permitted so to do, try how they would, and as hard, and as patiently.
After the death of Quantrell and the surrender of the remnant of his Guerrillas, Frank James was not permitted, at first, to return to Missouri at all, much less to his home in Clay County.
He lingered in Clay County as long as possible, very circumspect in his actions and very conservative in his behavior. Tempted one day by his beardless face and innocent walk and to bear upon him roughly, four Federal soldiers set upon Frank James in Brandenburg and made haste to force an issue. For a moment the old fire of his earlier and stormier days flared up all of a sudden from the ashes of the past and consumed as with a single hot blast of passion prudence, accountability, caution and discretion. He fought as he had fought at Centralia. Two of the Federals were killed instantly, the third was desperately wounded, while the fourth shot Frank badly in the joint of the left hip, inflicting a grievous hurt and one which caused him afterwards a great deal of pain and trouble.
Staunch friends hid him while the hue and cry were heaviest, and careful surgical attention brought him back to life when he lay so close to death’s door that by the lifting of a hand he also might have lifted its latch.
This fight, however, was not one of his own seeking, nor one which he could have avoided without the exhibition of a quality he never had known anything about and never could know anything about—physical cowardice.
Jesse James, emaciated, tottering as he walked, fighting what seemed to everyone a hopeless battle—of “the skeleton boy against skeleton death”—joined his mother in Nebraska and returned with her to their home near Kearney, in Clay County. His wound would not heal, and more ominous still, every now and then there was a hemorrhage.
In the spring of 1866 he was just barely able to mount a horse and ride a bit. And he did ride, but he rode armed, watchful, vigilant, haunted. He might be killed, waylaid, ambuscaded, assassinated; but he would be killed with his eyes open and his pistols about him.
The hunt for this maimed and emaciated Guerrilla culminated on the night of February 18th, 1867. On this night an effort was made to kill him. Five militiamen, well armed and mounted, came to his mother’s house and demanded admittance. The weather was bitterly cold, and Jesse James, parched with fever, was tossing wearily in bed. His pistols were under his head. His step-father. Dr. Samuels, heard the militiamen as they walked upon the front porch, and demanded to know what they wanted. They told him to open the door. He came up to Jesse’s room and asked him what he should do. “Help me to the window,” was the low, calm reply, “that I may look out.” He did so.
There was snow on the ground and the moon was shining. He saw that all the horses hitched to the fence had on cavalry saddles, and then he knew that the men were soldiers. He had but one of two things to do—drive them away or die.