Dime Novels

CHAPTER I

In the Robber's Nest

Bang! Ping; A bullet whistled by my left ear.

. . .

Three horsemen approached me. They were rather suspicious than angry, and they had just ridden out of the gate of a lonely farmhouse that I had jogged leisurely but observantly by a few minutes before.

I knew them instantly, though, very fortunately, they didn't know me in the disguise, half clerical and half agricultural, that I then wore. They were three daring Chicago detectives in the disguise of horse-traders -- Hawes, Jewell, and Whittaker by name. They were on the lookout for Jesse and Frank James, the noted train robbers and bandits, and had just visited old Mrs. James' farmhouse, in the hope of finding the dreaded outlaws there, and worming themselves into their confidence, with a view to their ultimate capture. Ten thousand dollars reward was the stake. I, William Lawson was on precisely the same "lay." I was, however, wholly on my own hook, didn't admire their mode of procedure, and proposed to go about the dangerous job in my own way.

There you have the whole situation in a nutshell. . . .

"Holy smoke!" he exclaimed, altogether thrown off his guard. "Here are Jess and Frank James now, right upon us."

He spoke truly. Two horsemen, followed at a short distance by a third, had followed us noiselessly on the soft, turfy ground at the side of the rocky road, and were now within a few paces of us. . . .

"Throw up your hands, curse you!" thundered Jesse James, with a terrible oath, covering us with his revolver, as we all came to a startled halt.

His companions did the same, while motioning me to one side, as a person too insignificant to be mixed up in the quarrel. "Throw up your hands," echoed Frank James, in an equally unmistakable tone.

Paralyzed with sudden panic, Jewell and Whittaker obeyed at once.

Hawes, however, saw that the game was up, surrender or no surrender. He resolved to die hard, if die he must. . . .

At the same instant Hawes fell dead, with Jesse James' bullet in his heart. Then the defenseless Whittaker went down, shot through and through by simultaneous shots from the robber brothers.

Jewell, at this, suddenly wheeled his horse, and took to flight at a tremendous pace. Then I took up my cue, horrified as I was, and began emptying my revolver at his retreating form, while Frank James spurred after him in hot pursuit.

"Who are you?" said Jesse James, eyeing me with a sphinxlike look, that would be either murderous or agreeable, as the case might be.

. . .

"Look at me, doctor!" he exclaimed, towering to his full stature, with either hand resting on the butt of a revolver. "Here I stand, Jesse James, the outlaw! All the world's hand is against me, my hand is against all the world in retaliation. Let them send their detectives after me in droves, if they choose. Ay, let them send constables' posses, and even Government troops, if they will. But let them get the drop on me -- let them come and take me if they dare!"

His words were no more desperate and ferocious than his manner, as he spoke. Being a disguised detective myself, I could not refrain from an inward shudder, but I preserved my outward calm.

"With half the country people for your well-wishes, Jess," said I, "you doubtless stand a pretty even chance." He gave a short laugh. . . .

The country grew wilder and wilder through which we passed.

^{Source: The Jesse James Stories: original narratives of the James Boys. No. 1 - NEW YORK, May 11, 1901 - Price Ten Cent http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/dp/pennies/texts/lawson_toc.html}

Interpretation

What the mythic Frontier of the dime novel actually embodies is a world in which the values and practices of the pre-industrial order are given renewed life: a place in which machines still stand in gardens and [where everyone is a worker].

It is only within this kind of framework that the outlaw can function unambiguously as a ''hero'' and an exemplar of the use of justified violence. He has been driven to outlawry by men who represent forces inimical to the values of the pastoral community and the interests of the [workers]—men who would divide and degrade those classes. . . . In this conception, the outlaw is not the savage enemy of order or civilization as such but the defender of a particular kind of civilization: the agrarian democracy . . . . In identifying with him, the reader can indulge sentiments of resentment and rebellion. . . .

The outlaw becomes a hero who resists the forces of order, but in a way that affirms the basic values of American society; the detective defends the progressive social order, but does so in the style of an outlaw. . . . For the facts of social conflict the mass-culture mythology substitutes a persuasive vision of an ultimate reconciliation between irreconcilable opposites: . . . farmers and landlords, workers and employers, outlaws and detectives, Jesse James and Allen Pinkerton, all abandon the pursuit of their interests to discover and share their common ground.

^{Source: Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation. New York: Maxwell MacMillan International, 1992. 145-6, 154.}