The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-08-18
YOUNG JESSE JAMES
LOOKS LIKE HIS DAD

to our boy pals about how we'd been in the same skiff with the dead desperado of the James bunch, and how he had chucked us into the water and all that, and word of 1t reached my dad a few days later, and l suppose the two of us were not whaled to frazzle or anything like that.
 "Fhe brother and l were pretty good swimmers from that time on. The tor turing outlaw had given us swimming nerve. We had confidence, for we'd had a stiff test.
 It was only about a year after that when I saw Jesse James himself alive and dead, and both times within the space of about a month
 At the end of the government mili- tary reservation in Leavenworth an ex- soldier named Jeff Brunstetter kept a grocery. l spent lot of time hanging around his store on my way back to the post from the school In Leavenworth.
 "One afternoon I was corked off on a heap of filled sacks of bran in the rear of Jeff's store. reading Q dime novel, curiously enough the dime novel con cerned the doings of the James gang when one of the most striking looking men that l ever saw, before or after, strolled into the store He was nearly six feet tall, and, even with the rather billowy linen duster that shrouded him to down below the tops of his spurred rid ing boots, as straight as a lance, with shoulders so broad that they seemed all most out of proportion with the fineness fhis waistline, which showed where the linen duster wrinkled In at his middle.
 He wore big cream-colored sombrero. pushed somewhat back on his jet black hair. and his heavy beard, as black as the under side of ravens wing, was in cu- rous contrast to the strange pallor of his skin-he'd been under cover for a long time then and his face had bleached out. But the mans eyes were what took me.
 Shrank From His Gaze.
 "They were extraordinarily large, not of the popping kind, but just big and per fectly set, and of the most brilliant and flashing blackness. When the man en- tered the door he cast those eyes about in quick, rowing glance that took every thing in at the one flash, including me, the kid on the sacks of bran l caught his eye, and l shrank from the immense pen etration of that quick gaze, not because the eyes were essentially wicked, but be- cause of the impallng penetration of them.
 Jeff Brunstetter the storekeeper, who was casting up some accounts behind a partition at the rear, came out when he heard the entering footsteps of the strik- ing looking visitor. The black-eyed man nodded when he saw Jeff standing there at the rear. Brunustetter looked like somebody transfxed.
 You damned fool he said to the man who'd just come in, and I can recall how I said to myself that Jeff must be a mighty brave man to call such a look ing man as the visitor such a name as that. Haven't you got any sense at allT
 "The black bearded man smiled, and it was rather winning smile. at that. and one that treasured me, for 1 was still quivering a bit under the balefulness of the quick and stabbing glance the man had given me upon entering.
 Tt wasn't until ! was man grown that Jeff Brunstetter told men about what happened at that meeting, the last time he ever saw Jesse James. The two had been brought up together in Missouri, and James trusted BrunstetteE/implicitly
 "They walked to the room back of the store. James told Jeff that he was pass ing through on his way back to his plant in St. Joe, where his wife was, and had decided to dig up Jeff, whom he hadn't seen for long time. From my position on the sack of bran, I heard Brunstetter expostulating with the visitor, though didn't catch the words.
 Jeff was really putting it into James for taking such a daring chance as walk ing around the edge of Leavenworth came to, when there were lot of fellows about in the district who might recognize him from having been by when James was putting over bank and train and other bold robberies In and around Leaven- worth. Then James said:
 Jesse James Presentiment.
 They're going to get me. Not tho posse people, but somebody l don't know who. But I've got a feeling, had it for