It has been alleged that even after a reward of $10,000 had been offered for either of the Jameses, dead or alive, the neighbors shielded them when it was known that they were at home. I spoke about that to an old man who lived on a nearby farm. "Yes," he said, "that's true. Once when the Pinkertons were hunting them I met Frank and some members of the gang riding along the road, not far from here. I could have told, but I didn't want to. I wasn't looking for any trouble with the James Gang. Suppose they had caught one or two of them? There'd be others left to get even with me, and I had my family to think of. That is the way lots of the neighbors felt about it. They were afraid to tell." I spoke to Frank James about the old "nickel novels." "Yes," he said, "some fellows printed a lot of stuff. I'd have stopped it, maybe, if I'd had as much money as Rockefeller. But what could I do? I tell you those yellow-backed books have done a lot of harm to the youth of this land--those and the moving pictures, showing robberies. Such things demoralize youth. If I had the job of censoring the moving pictures, they'd say I was a reg'lar Robespierre!" [Illustration: We strolled in the direction of the old house, that house of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times.... It was there that the Pinkertons threw the bomb.] "How about some of the old stories of robberies in which you were supposed to have taken part?" I asked. "I neither affirm nor deny," Frank James answered, with the glibness of long custom. "If I admitted that these stories were true, people would say: 'There is the greatest scoundrel unhung!' and if I denied 'em, they'd say: 'There's the greatest liar on earth!' So I just say nothing." According to John Samuels, Frank James and Cole Younger were generally acknowledged to be the brains of the James Gang. "It was claimed," he said, "that Frank planned and Jesse executed. Frank was certainly the cool man of the two, and Jesse was a little bit excitable. He had the name of being the quickest man in the world with a gun. Sometimes when he was home for a visit, when I was a boy, he'd be sitting there in the house, and there'd come some little noise. Then he'd whip out his pistol so quick you couldn't see the motion of his hand." As we conversed we strolled in the direction of the old house, that house of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times. On the way we passed Frank James's chicken coop, and I noticed that on it had been painted the legend: "Bull Moose--T. R." "The wing, at the back, is the old part of the house," James explained. "It was there that the Pinkertons threw the bomb." I asked about the bomb throwing and heard the story from John Samuels, who was there when it occurred.