eir coming by a negro servant, sought to convince
them, as we had the earlier posse, that they could not have had anything
to do with the affair at Gad's Hill. But Allen, remembering the recent
fate of Whicher, drew his pistol and shot John in the neck. John returned
the fire and killed Daniels and took after Allen. Side by side the horses
galloped, John firing at the detective till he fell from the saddle
mortally wounded. John turned to ride back to where Jim was, when he
toppled from his saddle and was dead in a few minutes.

The St. Louis detective had fled at the first fire, and lived to tell
graphic stories of how it all happened, although he was really too busy
getting out to know anything about it.

22. AMNESTY BILL FAILS

The killing of Lull, Daniels and Whicher within a single week was
undoubtedly exasperating to the head of the Pinkerton agency, and had he
not been personally embittered thereby he probably would not have avenged
it so terribly.

In the next January, 1875, a posse of Pinkerton men and others, guided by
Daniel H. Asker, a neighbor of the James boys, proceeded to their home
near Kearney and threw a bomb into the house where the family was seated.
An eight-year-old half-brother of Frank and Jesse was killed, their
mother, Mrs. Samuels, had one arm torn off, and other members of the
family were more or less injured. But Frank and Jesse were not taken.

There had been a feeling among many people in the state even before that
these detectives were unjustly pursuing some of the Confederate soldiers,
and I have been told since that Gov. Silas Woodson was on the eve of
interfering with Pinkerton's men when news came that two of them had been
killed in an encounter with John and Jim Younger.

At any rate the death of the innocent little Samuels boy made still more
pronounced this feeling against the operations of the detectives, and in
favor of the members of the Confederate army who had been outlawed by
Fremont, Halleck, Ewing and the Drake constitution, ungenerously, to say
the least.

This feeling found definite expression shortly after the raid on the
Samuels home in the introduction of a bill in the Missouri legislature
offering amnesty to the Younger and James brothers by name, and others who
had been outlawed with them by proclamation, from all their acts during
the war, and promising them a fair trial on any charge against them
arising after the war.

The bill was introdu