Jesse James 3

By the end of the story, I was having no problems with reading it anymore. Jesse James was written in a much different time and it took me so long to finally get used to it because I go out of my way to avoid literature like this. The Wild West is all gun-slinging and horse-riding, so it's hard to motivate myself to read a story and find out what it is about when I already know about 95% of what is going to happen. I admit, the train may have knocked that percentage down to 85% this time, which made it a slightly more interesting read than last time.

In the last part of this story, I have several things that I could rant about, but I see an important theme that needs to be addressed. At the end of the story (SPOILER ALERT), Jesse James turned out to be more cowardly than previously thought. He wore a bullet proof vest under his clothes to protect his chest and he was hiding his face behind the body of a little kid. That really ruined the image of the invincible Jesse James in my mind. The author spent all of this time building him up, making him dodge bullets more effectively than Neo (from THE MATRIX) and do a triple backflip off of his horse and stick the landing perfectly (jk. That didn't happen, but they worded him dismounting his horse "Dancer" a lot like that frequently, especially during confrontations.) just to have him run away like a mortal wimp. Some of his invincibility was preserved, though, as he did get away in the end without getting killed. (In my opinion, that was a major cop-out by the author. I felt cheated. I sided with Bill Lawson the whole time and then Bill doesnt' even get to kill Jesse? Lame. Very lame.)

One last thought: How good was the technology for bullet proof vest in this time period? It is strange for me to even think that they had "Iron-clad" shirts at all...