Two strangers on horseback supposedly showed up at Bill Bishpop’s Bell County farm about suppertime one day in the 1870s seeking food and lodging. Bill showed the riders to a barn where they could stable their horses and commented on their “fine Missouri stock.” 

“We got these horses in Denton,” one of the men replied, rather sharply. 

Bishop thought nothing of it until later, when he was showing the men to their room and noticed that one them was missing the tip of his index finger. The missing finger combined with the “Missouri stock” correction convinced Bishop that the houseguests were none other than the notorious outlaws Frank and Jesse James. 

When overly excited Bishop stuttered so badly he was unable to speak. To communicate to his wife his sudden revelation, he drew a picture of a hand in some flat dough where she was rolling bread and marked out the index finger. The next day the Bishops discovered the two strangers had left behind some gold coins as a show of appreciation for their hospitality. Or maybe it was hush money. 

A couple of weeks later a U.S. Marshall dropped by the Bishop place, looking for outlaws who had robbed a stagecoach near Salado. He added, somewhat derisively, that some fools identified Jesse James as the perpetrator. Crazy talk, huh?

For the record: Jesse James was missing the tip of a finger on his left hand. Nearly every source identifies the missing digit was the middle finger, not the index, though one source says it was the forefinger. (The thumb and pinky have yet to be claimed.) Its’s unlikely the James brothers ever robbed a stagecoach in Bell County, though some accounts have them robbing a stagecoach near Austin (or San Antonio) in April (or May) of 1874. 

A long-standing rumor has Frank and Jesse James checking into the Stagecoach Inn in Salado— under their own names— around that time. However, the register supposedly proving this was supposedly stolen in the 1940s. 

“Supposedly” in this context is shorthand for interesting stories that might not be, you know, true. 

For example, Frank and Jesse James supposedly buried loot from the Salado (or Austin or San Antonio) stagecoach robbery at Owl Creek in Bell County. A local man supposedly caught them in the act but wisely kept himself concealed. He memorized the location and dropped by often enough to make sure he didn’t forget where it was. He always intended to dig it up when it felt safe to do so but he died without ever feeling that safe. Maybe he was just a nervous Nellie. 

When the Great Cole Younger and Frank James Wild West Show supposedly made a stop in Killeen in 1903, Younger supposedly mentioned riding through the country during his outlaw years. Nobody asked for details and he didn’t volunteer any.

The history books tell us that a wannabe named Bob Ford shot Jesse James in the back in 1882 and “laid poor Jesse in his grave,” as the ballad claims. To that, some people— at least two— have added “supposedly.” 

An old man named J. Frank Dalton started telling people in 1948 that his real name was Jesse James— the Jesse James. This came after he had spent several years claiming to be the J. Frank Dalton, a former lawman who died in 1887. When a bunch of pesky historians pointed out the many ways this was impossible, he came clean and admitted to posing as Dalton to hide the fact that he was really Jesse James. 

In 1949, Dalton, aka Jesse James, supposedly attended his alleged 102^nd birthday party in Missouri. He had his picture taken with Billy the Kid, aka Brushy Bill Roberts of Hico. James Russell Davis, claiming to be the long-gone Cole Younger, was also there to commemorate the good old days when they supposedly got killed. For all we know, Butch Cassidy might have been there, too. 

Dalton died in 1951at the supposed age of 103. His tombstone in a Granbury cemetery reads “Jesse Woodson James” and below that “Supposedly killed in 1882.”