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Trade of Train Robbery - An account of train robbers of the American west
Trade of Train Robbery - An account of train robbers of the American west
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Train robbery has been a recognized branch of criminal industry for nearly forty years, yet the advance in it has been far less than might be expected of a pursuit that has, at one time or another, attracted the shrewdest, as well as the most daring and enterprising of the criminals of America.
In forty years there has been only one conspicuous advance. It has not kept pace with the progress of related arts. For this reason, it has become the most hazardous of crimes - not in the commission, that is astonishingly easy; but in the getting away.
The one advance is the use of dynamite for the forcing of the express cars. What may be obtained from passengers is merely a byproduct, and is ignored by many distinguished bandits as involving more trouble and risk than the probable yield justifies. It has come to be the practice merely to fire a perfunctory volley along the train side to warn the passengers to still inside and mind their own business, and then to devote whatever there is of time to the treasure cars.
Except for the dynamite, the first train robbery might have been one that took place a week ago, so far as method is concerned. It happened on the Ohio & Mississippi road at Brownstown, about ninety miles from Cincinnati. Two men appeared on the tender of the locomotive and covered the engineer and fireman with revolvers. They made the engineer stop and uncouple the ex¬press car, then haul it five miles down the road. They forced the messenger to open the safe, and they realized twelve thousand dollars by the new method of depredation. This was in 1866. Credit for the robbery was given to a family named Reno, but the express company failed to prove aught against them.
I have stood with a posse in a cabin while a detective was bargaining with its toil worn proprietor to lure the two hunted desperadoes to their undoing, when all the time Evans and Sontag lay under the hay in the barn not a dozen yards from the cabin door. I have listened to a woman—as bad and as hard a woman as ever preyed on a drunken lumberman promise to send word as soon as the men made their appearance at the mountain den where she and others of her kind laired. I have seen her beg a pittance of the price of her perfidy on account, when all the time she knew the two lay asleep in the very building.
I even remember a man, a gaunt old criminal, one who had murdered a Chinese laborer to save the wages he owed him, undertaking to earn the reward by guiding the posse to where the outlaws were hiding, admitting as he did so that but a day or two before they had been his guests in his ranch house. He guided the officers to a camp that had been abandoned by Evans and Sontag. The way was by a trail beneath a big bluff, where the hunted men crouched in safety, eagerly inspecting the personnel of the posse the old rascal had promised to show them.
Neither he nor any of the people of the hills would stretch forth a hand to grasp the reward offered them.
In forty years there has been only one conspicuous advance. It has not kept pace with the progress of related arts. For this reason, it has become the most hazardous of crimes - not in the commission, that is astonishingly easy; but in the getting away.
The one advance is the use of dynamite for the forcing of the express cars. What may be obtained from passengers is merely a byproduct, and is ignored by many distinguished bandits as involving more trouble and risk than the probable yield justifies. It has come to be the practice merely to fire a perfunctory volley along the train side to warn the passengers to still inside and mind their own business, and then to devote whatever there is of time to the treasure cars.
Except for the dynamite, the first train robbery might have been one that took place a week ago, so far as method is concerned. It happened on the Ohio & Mississippi road at Brownstown, about ninety miles from Cincinnati. Two men appeared on the tender of the locomotive and covered the engineer and fireman with revolvers. They made the engineer stop and uncouple the ex¬press car, then haul it five miles down the road. They forced the messenger to open the safe, and they realized twelve thousand dollars by the new method of depredation. This was in 1866. Credit for the robbery was given to a family named Reno, but the express company failed to prove aught against them.
I have stood with a posse in a cabin while a detective was bargaining with its toil worn proprietor to lure the two hunted desperadoes to their undoing, when all the time Evans and Sontag lay under the hay in the barn not a dozen yards from the cabin door. I have listened to a woman—as bad and as hard a woman as ever preyed on a drunken lumberman promise to send word as soon as the men made their appearance at the mountain den where she and others of her kind laired. I have seen her beg a pittance of the price of her perfidy on account, when all the time she knew the two lay asleep in the very building.
I even remember a man, a gaunt old criminal, one who had murdered a Chinese laborer to save the wages he owed him, undertaking to earn the reward by guiding the posse to where the outlaws were hiding, admitting as he did so that but a day or two before they had been his guests in his ranch house. He guided the officers to a camp that had been abandoned by Evans and Sontag. The way was by a trail beneath a big bluff, where the hunted men crouched in safety, eagerly inspecting the personnel of the posse the old rascal had promised to show them.
Neither he nor any of the people of the hills would stretch forth a hand to grasp the reward offered them.
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