第12章 HOLDING UP A TRAIN(1)

[Note.The man who told me these things was for several years an outlaw in the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he so frankly describes.

His description of the _modus_ _operandi_ should prove interesting, his counsel of value to the potential passenger in some future "hold-up,"while his estimate of the pleasures of train robbing will hardly induce any one to adopt it as a profession.I give the story in almost exactly his own words.O.H.]

Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up a train would be a hard job.Well, it isn't; it's easy.I have contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of express companies, and the most trouble I ever had about a hold-up was in being swindled by unscrupulous people while spending the money I got.The danger wasn't anything to speak of, and we didn't mind the trouble.

One man has come pretty near robbing a train by himself; two have succeeded a few times; three can do it if they are hustlers, but five is about the right number.The time to do it and the place depend upon several things.

The first "stick-up" I was ever in happened in 1890.Maybe the way I got into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business.Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone wrong.

The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man and plays some low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name.Wire fences and "nesters" made five of them; a bad heart made the sixth.Jim S-- and Iwere working on the 101 Ranch in Colorado.The nesters had the cowman on t he go.They had taken up the land and elected officers who were hard to get along with.Jim and I rode into La Junta one day, going south from a round-up.We were having a little fun without malice toward any-body when a farmer administration cut in and tried to harvest us.Jim shot a deputy marshal, and I kind of corroborated his side of the argument.We skirmished up and down the main street, the boomers having bad luck all the time.After a while we leaned forward and shoved for the ranch down on the Ceriso.We were riding a couple of horses that couldn't fly, but they could catch birds.

A few days after that, a gang of the La Junta boomers came to the ranch and wanted us to go back with them.Naturally, we declined.We had the house on them, and before we were done refusing, that old 'dobe was plumb full of lead.When dark came we fagged 'em a batch of bullets and shoved out the back door for the rocks.They sure smoked us as we went.We had to drift, which we did, and rounded up down in Oklahoma.

Well, there wasn't anything we could get there, and, being mighty hard up, we decided to transact a little business with the railroads.Jim and Ijoined forces with Tom and Ike Moore -- two brothers who had plenty of sand they were willing to convert into dust.I can call their names, for both of them are dead.Tom was shot while robbing a bank in Arkansas; Ike was killed during the more dangerous pastime of attending a dance in the Creek Nation.

We selected a place on the Santa Fe where there was a bridge across a deep creek surrounded by heavy timber.All passenger trains took water at the tank close to one end of the bridge.It was a quiet place, the nearest house being five miles away.The day before it happened, we rested our horses and "made medicine" as to how we should get about it.Our plans were not at all elaborate, as none of us had ever engaged in a hold-up before.

The Santa Fe flyer was due at the tank at 11.15 P.M.At eleven, Tom and I lay down on one side of the track, and Jim and Ike took the other.As the train rolled up, the headlight flashing far down the track and the steam hissing from the engine, I turned weak all over, I would have worked a whole year on the ranch for nothing to have been out of that affair right then.Some of the nerviest men in the business have told me that they felt the same way the first time.

The engine had hardly stopped when I jumped on the running-board on one side, while Jim mounted the other.As soon as the engineer and fireman saw our guns they threw up their hands without being told, and begged us not to shoot, saying they would do anything we wanted them to.

"Hit the ground," I ordered, and they both jumped off.We drove them before us down the side of the train.While this was happening, Tom and Ike had been blazing away, one on each side of the train, yelling like Apaches, so as to keep the passengers herded in the cars.Some fellow stuck a little twenty-two calibre out one of the coach windows and fired it straight up in the air.I let drive and smashed the glass just over his head.That settled everything like resistance from that direction.

By this time all my nervousness was gone.I felt a kind of pleasant excitement as if I were at a dance or a frolic of some sort.The lights were all out in the coaches, and, as Tom and Ike gradually quit firing and yelling, it got to be almost as still as a graveyard.I remember hearing a little bird chirping in a bush at the side of the track, as if it were complaining at being waked up.

I made the fireman get a lantern, and then I went to the express car and yelled to the messenger to open up or get perforated.He slid the door back and stood in it with his hands up."Jump overboard, son," I said, and he hit the dirt like a lump of lead.There were two safes in the car -- a big one and a little one.By the way, I first located the messenger's arsenal -- a double-barrelled shot-gun with buckshot cartridges and a thirty-eight in a drawer.I drew the cartridges from the shot-gun, pocketed the pistol, and called the messenger inside.I shoved my gun against his nose and put him to work.He couldn't open the big safe, but he did the little one.There was only nine hundred dollars in it.That was mighty small winnings for our trouble, so we decided to go through the passengers.We took our prisoners to the smoking-car, and from there sent the engineer through the train to light up the coaches.