In the latter part of August, 1876, a mysterious company of men made their appearance in southern Minnesota, and proceeded to visit various cities and villages in that part of the state. There were certainly eight of them, and possibly nine, some of them hard, vicious-looking fellows, from whom people instinctively shrank, others gentlemanly, handsome, and even imposing in personal appearance. They travelled on horseback and rode like men accustomed to live in the saddle. They had the finest of horses and equipment, part of it brought with them, the rest purchased after they entered the state. They had plenty of money and spent it lavishly. In their progress from place to place they did not go like an organized band, but wandered here and there, sometimes two by two, sometimes four or five together. When several of them visited a town together, they went to different hotels and avoided all appearance of collusion or of common design. Often they avoided towns and sought entertainment at the houses of farmers or other citizens, where they found no difficulty in making themselves agreeable and in giving a plausible account of themselves. Wherever they went, they attracted more or less attention, excited the curiosity of the inquisitive, and occasionally the suspicions of the wary; but upon most people they made the impression of well-bred respectability. They passed for civil engineers looking up railway routes, for capitalists in search of land, for stockmen dealing in horses and cattle. Their outfit and mode of travel made either of these suppositions reasonable, and their smooth courtesy, affability and apparent frankness were accepted in lieu of credentials of character. That they were not all that they pretended to be many people suspected; but that they were a band of outlaws, or rather a combination of three bands, comprising the most notorious desperadoes in the country, laying their plans for a great robbery, no one suspected. Still less did they themselves suspect that their career of crime was so near its close, or that they were making deliberate plans for their own destruction. Of course they passed under assumed names, introducing themselves as J. C. King, Jack Ward, etc. It is now known that the band consisted of the following men: Jesse James and his brother Frank, Thomas C. Younger (commonly known as Cole Younger) and his brothers James and Robert, Clel Miller, William Stiles, alias Chadwell, and Charles Pitts, alias Geo. Wells. Some persons maintain that there was a ninth man, but he has never been identified, and is commonly believed to be mythical. The eight whose names are given were all men of criminal antecedents, and some of them with a record for deeds of the most revolting atrocity; though several of them were connected with highly respectable families.