Frank & Jesse James Last Ride

One local barfly had the temerity to question his outlaw credentials and Ryan pulled his pistols and made a scene. At gunpoint, he extracted an apology for the offense, but his luck, and ultimately that of the James Gang, had finally run out. The bartender just happened to be an off-duty Sheriff’s deputy. After a vigorous scuffle, Ryan was disarmed and under arrest. He was carried off to the Nashville jail where his identity was soon revealed and he was asked to explain how he came into possession of a large portion of that army payroll. Jesse James, and his brother Frank, were soon implicated in the robbery and warrants were issued for their arrest. Feeling the closeness of the long arm of the law, they would stage yet another getaway. But not for long. The heady adventures of the notorious Frank and Jesse James were about to be a thing of the past. The chain of events that ended nearly two decades of outlawry that included numerous bank robberies, train robberies, and even taking the box office of the Kansas City Exposition, were set in motion in northern Alabama on that cold day in March 1881. Within a year, Jesse would be dead, shot in the back of the head by Bob Ford in an attempt to earn clemency from the government for his own crimes and collect a hefty reward offered by the governor of Missouri. During the following year, Bill Ryan would be sentenced to a long prison term, Frank would surrender to the Missouri authorities, the rest would scatter, and the infamous James Gang would be retired for good.