Sam's only contact with western and northwestern Missouri, the home
territory of James, was in 1861, when he and Orion took a boat up the
Missouri, got off at St. Joseph, and headed west by coach along the
then-new Pony Express route.  By the time James became famous, as a
"bushwacker" during the war and outlaw afterward, Clemens had transformed
to Twain and was long gone.  Opie Read's stories seem to be largely
imagined anecdotes.
Martin Zehr

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 3:26 PM, Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> The only anecdote I have seen is one reported by Opie Read in his book
> _Mark Twain and I_ (1940) -- and unsubstantiated. Read states Twain told a
> group of men that he met James in a "small town store" in Missouri and
> James told Twain "Guess you and I are 'bout the greatest in our line"
> (Read, p. 11).
>
> Writer Max McCoy used the report of this meeting to write a novel of
> alternative history with James proceeding to tell his life story to Twain.
> McCoy's book is titled _Jesse: A Novel of the Outlaw Jesse James_ (1999)
> and rereleased in 2016.
>
> Barb
>