It was unseasonably warm when Mr. Howard doffed his jacket.

As an afterthought, he also removed his gun belt, saying he didn't want the neighbors seeing him armed.

He could hear his wife shuffling in the kitchen as he pulled his boots off, along with the quiet laughter of his children playing in the front yard.

Howard's keen eyes scanned the parlor.

He soon stood with a sigh and carefully climbed atop a chair,

intent on dust in a framed picture that his wife had so lovingly mounted to the wall.

That's when he heard the sound. The unmistakable swish a cold still leaving a leather holster,

followed by the mechanical click of a hammer. A split second later,

a bullet struck Howard in the back of his head. A brief explosion and blinding light, followed by

an all-encompassing darkness. Never again would he hear his children at play. Never again would

he see the desire in his wife's eyes, nor experienced the simple pleasure of a fine

horse underneath him. At long last, the war was over. Jesse James was dead.

It had been over three years since Jesse and the boys rode into Northfield,

a disastrous decision that saw the entire gang either dead or imprisoned,

save for Jesse and his brother Frank.

They alone had managed to escape, and for the next couple of years, Jesse James did his

level best to keep a low profile.

Moved his family to the outskirts of Nashville, where so far as the neighbors were concerned,

he was John Davis Howard, a gentleman farmer and a grain speculator with a pinched for fine horse flesh and playing Pharaoh.

His brother Frank was likewise living under an alias, that of B.J. Woodson.

Swore off profanity, joined the Methodist Church, and, interestingly enough, found solace in his labor.

Quote, I worked regularly every day on the farm, seldom failing to put in my full ten hours per day in the field.

...