Opening material

[Illustration: Cole Younger]

Cole Younger

The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself

Being an Autobiography of the Missouri Guerrilla Captain and Outlaw, his Capture and Prison Life, and the Only Authentic Account of the Northfield Raid Ever Published By Cole Younger

CONTENTS

Why This Book Is Here 1. Boyhood Days 2. The Dark and Bloody Ground 3. Driven from Home 4. The Trap That Failed 5. Vengeance Indeed 6. In the Enemy’s Lines 7. Lone Jack 8. A Foul Crime 9. How Elkins Escaped 10. A Price on My Head 11. Betrayed 12. Quantrell on War 13. The Palmyra Butchery 14. Lawrence 15. Chasing Cotton Thieves 16. A Clash with Apaches 17. The Edicts of Outlawry 18. Not All Black 19. A Duel and an Auction 20. Laurels Unsought 21. The Truth about John Younger 22. Amnesty Bill Fails 23. Belle Starr 24. “Captain Dykes” 25. Eluding the Police 26. Ben Butler’s Money 27. Horace Greeley Perry 28. The Northfield Raid 29. A Chase to the Death 30. To Prison for Life 31. Some Private History 32. Lost—Twenty-five Years 33. The Star of Hope 34. On Parole 35. Jim Gives It Up 36. Free Again 37. The Wild West 38. What My Life Has Taught Me An Afterward

ILLUSTRATIONS

Cole Younger Nannie Harris and Charity Kerr John Jarrette William Clarke Quantrell William Gregg Jim Younger Jesse James (top) and Frank James (bottom) John Younger Bob Younger Illustration: Wild West Show advertisement

WHY THIS BOOK IS HERE

Many may wonder why an old “guerrilla” should feel called upon at this late day to rehearse the story of his life. On the eve of sixty, I come out into the world to find a hundred or more of books, of greater or less pretensions, purporting to be a history of “The Lives of the Younger Brothers,” but which are all nothing more nor less than a lot of sensational recitals, with which the Younger brothers never had the least association. One publishing house alone is selling sixty varieties of these books, and I venture to say that in the whole lot there could not be found six pages of truth. The stage, too, has its lurid dramas in which we are painted in devilish blackness.

It is therefore my purpose to give an authentic and absolutely correct history of the lives of the “Younger Brothers,” in order that I may, if possible, counteract in some measure at least, the harm that has been done my brothers and myself, by the blood and thunder accounts of misdeeds, with which relentless sensationalists have charged us, but which have not even the suggestion of truth about them, though doubtless they have had everything to do with coloring public opinion.

In this account I propose to set out the little good that was in my life, at the same time not withholding in any way the bad, with the hope of setting right before the world a family name once honored, but which has suffered disgrace by being charged with more evil deeds than were ever its rightful share.

To the host of friends in Minnesota and Missouri who have done everything possible to help my brother and myself during the last few years, with no other object than the love of doing good and aiding fellow creatures in suffering, I wish to say that I shall always conduct myself so that they will never have the least cause to regret having championed our cause, or feel any shame in the friendship so generously proven to us. Nothing lies deeper in my heart than the gratitude I feel to them all, except a desire to prove myself worthy.

In the two states named these friends are too numerous for me to mention each of their names, but among those in Missouri who traveled long journeys to Minnesota to plead my cause, even though they knew it to be unpopular in many quarters, I wish to especially thank Col. W. C. Bronough of Clinton, Capt. Steve Ragan, Colonel Rogers of Kansas City and Miss Cora MacNeill, now Mrs. George M. Bennett of Minneapolis, but also formerly of Kansas City.

In concluding these remarks, I wish to say that from cover to cover there is not a statement which could not be verified.

Yours Truly, COLE YOUNGER Lee’s Summit, Mo.