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Back about one hundred years ago when gunfights, deadly poker hands, and the James brothers were popular in the newspapers, there lived an old widow in a small cabin just off the road on a large chunk of land in Minnesota. Unfortunantly, since her husband died, she could not pay what she had to to keep her land and would become homeless tomorrow when the collecter came. She only had twenty-seven dollars, while she needed nine hundred.
That night the old lady kept counting her greenbacks, wishing. A thunderclap startled and snapped her out of her trance. Just then she heard someone rapping on the door.
'They wasn't supposed to come till tomorrow!' She hobbled over to the door and opened it. Two young men stood there in the rain. Both pulled down the bandanas from their lower face to their necks.
"'Scuse us, ma'am," said the younger looking one, "do y' think we could stay here for the night?"
"Oh yes. Come in. Come in out of the cold." She moved aside to let the two in, then scurried to another room, saying, "Let me git you some dry clothes to change inta tonight," and came back, presenting the two sets of clothing. "These was Shad's. Before he passed away, I mean."
The lady set up bed in the other room made of soft pillows, cotton, and deer and bearskin. 'Oh!'
"There is salt pork, potatas, crackas. and 'lasses in the box by the door. Do help youselves." She felt happy to be able to help somebody out; to use this house for good one last time. Too bad it woudn't be hers anymore tomorrow. She wiped away two tears that escaped her eye.
"What be the matter, ma'am?"
She looked up at the small doorway where the man was standing, holding a wooden platter with a the salt pork on it.
"Well..." The other man with a light beard joined the younger one in the doorway when the widow recited her story.
"But," she sighed, almost crying, "I guess it don' matter. I'm jus' an' ol' lady. Nobody needs me around." She started to cry. The two men glanced at each other, then at the bed the lady made them.
She walked into another room.
"Good night, you two."
She laid down on her own bed and cryed herself to sleep.
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The next morning when the widow woke up, the two men were gone. They attempeted to fold the blankets, but weren't very successful. They same thing went for the clothes they had borrowed. She went into the kitchen and found a pile of greenbacks on the table with a note beside it that read:
Deer ma'am,
Thank ya kinely for evrythin you has done for us. Them greenbacks on the table is the nine hundred dollars you need for your house and land.
She could have done cartwheels if she were only forty years younger. Someone cared enough to help her out! Then she noticed the note was unsigned. She wondered who those two men were. And where did they get the money?
Somebody knocked on the door lightly. The time had come. The widowed woman took the money and confidently opened the door.
"Do you have the nine hundred dollars?" the man aked her. She proudly handed over the greenbacks. The man looked a bit stunned at first, then tilted his hat.
"Have a good day ma'am." He got into his wagon, snapped the reins, and rode off. The old lady smiled and thanked the two young men through thought who had helped her.
Meanwhile, that money collecter was riding down the road, when he heard two gunshots and two horses came up along both sides of his wagon.
"Give us your greenbacks!!" one man ordered at gunpoint. The man in the wagon groped frantically for the bag, cussed, gave it to the man, and said, "The sherrif's goin to hear about this!"
The men on the horses pulled their bandanas off their faces, and turned out to be the two men that the old lady took care of the other night.
"Tell your friends," sneered the younger man,"that you was robbed by Jesse and Frank James!"
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