---
author: Eric Wagoner
date: '2000-05-31T01:15:01'
draft: false
title: '"That dirty little coward that'
---

"_That dirty little coward that shot Mister Howard has laid poor Jesse in his grave._ " Or, maybe not. The body of J. Frank Dalton, who died in 1951 claiming to be Jesse James, [is being exhumed for testing](http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/jessejames000530.html) to see if it really was. Did he fake his death in 1882 and live to be 104? We'll know in three months or so. One of the James' Gang's hideouts was Meramac Caverns, just a few miles down the interstate from my Missouri hometown. If you take the tour, they'll show you "Loot Rock," where they divvied up the gold. You know, the caverns has advertising painted on every other barn from Utah to Ohio, but I can't find a single official website. Hrmph.