| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train robbers : An accurate and faithful history of their exploits and adventures
Author: Agee, George W.
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train robbers : An accurate and faithful history of their exploits and adventures" ***
[Illustration: RUBE BURROW.]
RUBE BURROW,
KING OF OUTLAWS,
AND HIS
BAND OF TRAIN ROBBERS.
AN ACCURATE AND FAITHFUL HISTORY OF THEIR
EXPLOITS AND ADVENTURES.
BY
G. W. AGEE,
Superintendent Western Division Southern Express Company.
PUBLISHERS
THE HENNEBERRY COMPANY
CHICAGO
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR
TO HIS COMRADES AND CO-WORKERS
IN THE EXPRESS SERVICE
OF AMERICA.
“Some hapless souls are led astray,
While some, themselves, seek out the way.
Some fall, unthinking, in the pit,
While others seek about for it.
’Tis probable, if Satan should
Strive for the universal good,
And close his gates and bar them well,
Some souls would still break into Hell.”
PREFACE.
Since the days of the James and Younger brothers, bold types of Western
outlawry, which were the immediate products of the late civil war, no
banditti have challenged such universal attention as those led by the
famous outlaw, Rube Burrow. The press of the country has woven, from
the wildest woof of fancy, full many a fiction touching his daring
deeds, and manufacturers of sensational literature have made of the
bandit as mystical a genius as the “Headless Hessian of Sleepy Hollow.”
With the view of correcting the erroneous accounts heretofore given
the public, I have yielded to the solicitations of many friends in the
Express service and consented to give a faithful and accurate history,
compiled from the official reports of the detectives, detailing the
daring deeds, the thrilling scenes and hair-breadth escapes of the
outlaw and his band of highwaymen. Important confessions of some of
the principal participants in the eight train robberies committed,
covering a period of nearly four years, are also given, without color
of fiction or the caprice of fancy.
It is the province of this volume, therefore, not to laud evil
endeavor, but rather to chronicle the hapless fate of those who,
turning aside from the paths of peace and honor, elect to tread the
devious and thorny road which leads on to the open gateway, over which
is emblazoned, in letters of living fire, the accursed malediction,
“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
G. W. AGEE.
_Memphis, Tenn., December, 1890._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Lamar County, Alabama--The Home of the Burrow Family--
Biographical Sketch of Rube Burrow’s Ancestors 1
CHAPTER II.
Rube Leaves Lamar County, Alabama--His Early Life in the Lone
Star State--His Brother Jim Joins Him--The Bellevue, Gordon
and Ben Brook, Texas, Train Robberies 8
CHAPTER III.
The Genoa, Ark., Robbery, December 9, 1887--Arrest of William
Brock--His Confession 19
CHAPTER IV.
The Pinkertons After Rube and Jim Burrow in Lamar County--Their
Narrow Escape 27
CHAPTER V.
Rube and Jim Board an L. & N. Railway Train at Brock’s
Gap--Their Arrest and the Subsequent Escape of Rube 31
CHAPTER VI.
Rube Burrow Returns to Lamar County--Joe Jackson Joins Him in
March, 1888--Their Trip into Baldwin County, Alabama 38
CHAPTER VII.
The Ride into Arkansas to Liberate Jim Burrow--Failure and
Return to Mississippi 42
CHAPTER VIII.
Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson Leave Arkansas--They Turn up as
Cotton Pickers in Tate County, Mississippi 45
CHAPTER IX.
Jim Burrow Arraigned--Trial Postponed--His Return to Little
Rock Prison--Letters Home--His Death in Prison 49
CHAPTER X.
The Duck Hill, Miss., Robbery--The Killing of Passenger Chester
Hughes 52
CHAPTER XI.
The Cold-blooded Murder of Moses Graves, the Postmaster of
Jewell, Alabama 61
CHAPTER XII.
Smith Joins Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson--The Buckatunna Robbery 68
CHAPTER XIII.
The Capture of Rube Smith and James McClung at Amory, Miss.--
McClung’s Confession--A Plan to Rob the Train Falls
Through--A Safe Robbery Nipped in the Bud 82
CHAPTER XIV.
A False Alarm--The Ox-cart Trip to Florida--The Separation--
Rube Located at Broxton Ferry--His Escape 91
CHAPTER XV.
Capture of Joe Jackson 104
CHAPTER XVI.
Confession of Leonard Calvert Brock, _alias_ Joe Jackson, made
at Memphis, Tenn., July 19, 1890, and Corrected and Amended
at Jackson, Miss., October 16, 1890 107
CHAPTER XVII.
Rube Smith’s Plot to Escape from Prison--His Plans Discovered--
The Tell-tale Letters 136
CHAPTER XVIII.
Rube Burrow Harbored in Santa Rosa--The Flomaton Robbery 142
CHAPTER XIX.
Rube Routed from Florida--The Chase into Marengo County,
Ala.--His Capture 151
CHAPTER XX.
Rube’s Last Desperate Act--Escape from Jail--The Deadly Duel on
the Streets of Linden--The Outlaw Killed 164
CHAPTER XXI.
Tragic Suicide of L. C. Brock, _alias_ Joe Jackson--He Leaps
from the Fourth Story of the Prison into the Open Court,
Sixty Feet Below, Causing Instant Death--His Last Statement 176
CHAPTER XXII.
Rube Smith’s Trial for the Buckatunna Mail Robbery--An
Unsuccessful Alibi--Perjured Witnesses--Masterly
Speeches--Conviction and Sentence 185
CHAPTER XXIII.
Conclusion 191
RUBE BURROW.
CHAPTER I.
LAMAR COUNTY, ALABAMA--THE HOME OF THE BURROW FAMILY--BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCH OF RUBE BURROW’S ANCESTORS.
Lamar County, Alabama, the home of the Burrow family, has become
historic as the lair of a robber band whose deeds of daring have had
no parallel in modern times, and the halo of romance with which that
locality has been invested has converted its rugged hills into mountain
fastnesses, its quiet vales into dark caverns, and the humble abodes of
its inhabitants into turreted fortresses and robber castles. The county
of Lamar, divested of the drapery of sensationalism, is one of the
“hill counties” of northern Alabama, and takes high rank in the list
of rich agricultural counties of the State. It possesses a charming
landscape of undulating hill and dale, watered by limpid streams, and
amid fertile valleys and on the crests of its picturesque uplands are
found the peaceful and prosperous homes of many good and law-abiding
people, thus proving that good people are indigenous to every clime
and land where the hand of civilization has left its kindly touch. “It
does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little
home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet.”
Lamar County was formed in 1868 from the most fertile portions of
Fayette and Marion Counties, and has changed its name three times;
first it was called Jones, then Sanford, and, finally, it was named
Lamar, in honor of the distinguished statesman and jurist who now
adorns the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. This
section of the State, though not until the last decade possessed of
the advantages of development which more fortunate sections have
long enjoyed, has always had an excellent citizenship. Here, in the
olden time, were found ardent followers of the political faith of
the founders of the Republic, and while the bonfires of the zealous
pioneers of that day and time lighted the hill tops, the valleys of
that section of northern Alabama reverberated with the campaign songs
of their enthusiastic compatriots. From this section, no less renowned
in war than in peace, a large company of soldiers was sent to the Creek
war, and a full quota of gallant men went forth to the Confederate
army, three companies of which were in the Twenty-sixth Alabama
Infantry, one of the most superb regiments in the Army of Northern
Virginia.
This much, in truth and justice, should be said in behalf of Lamar
County, which has gained an unenviable notoriety as the birthplace of
Rube Burrow, and later as the rendezvous of his confreres in crime.
When metropolitan places, with well-equipped police powers, give
birth to such social organizations as the anarchists in Chicago and
the Italian Mafia in New Orleans, and become asylums for organized
assassins, the good people of these cities are no more responsible for
the resultant evils than are the law-abiding people of Lamar County,
Alabama, for the deeds of outlawry of which one of her citizens, by
the accident of birthplace, was the chief exponent. The Burrow family,
however, were among the earliest settlers of Fayette County, Alabama,
from which Lamar was taken, and from their prolific stock descended a
numerous progeny, who, by the natural ties of consanguinity, formed a
clan amongst whom the bold outlaws found ready refuge when fleeing from
the hot pursuit organized in the more populous localities which were
the scenes of their daring crimes. Chief among Rube’s partisans and
protectors was James A. Cash, a brother-in-law.
Allen H. Burrow, the father of Rube, was born in Maury County, Tenn.,
May 21, 1825, his parents moving to Franklin County, Ala., in 1826, and
who, in 1828, settled within the vicinity of his present home in Lamar
County, Ala. In August, 1849, Allen Burrow married Martha Caroline
Terry, a native of Lamar County, who was born in 1830. From this union
were born ten children--five boys and five girls. John T. Burrow, the
oldest child, lives near Vernon, the county seat of Lamar. Apart from
harboring his brother Rube, while an outlaw, he has always borne a fair
reputation. He is of a rollicking disposition, possesses a keen sense
of the ridiculous, is a fine mimic and recounts an anecdote inimitably,
and, though crude of speech and manner, having little education, is a
man of more than average intelligence. Jasper Burrow, the second son,
is a quiet, taciturn man; he lives with his father, and is reputed to
be of unsound mind. Four of the daughters married citizens of Lamar
County. The youngest, who bears the prosaic name of Ann Eliza, is
a tall blonde of twenty summers, and is yet unmarried. She is of a
defiant nature, has a comely and attractive face, and is a favorite
with many a rustic youth in the vicinage of the Burrow homestead.
She was devoted to Rube, afforded a constant medium of communication
between the parental home and the hiding place of the outlaws, and was
the courier through whom Rube Smith was added to the robber band while
in rendezvous in Lamar County.
Reuben Houston Burrow, the outlaw, was born in Lamar County, December
11, 1854. His early life in Lamar was an uneventful one. He was known
as an active, sprightly boy, apt in all athletic pursuits, a swift
runner, an ardent huntsman and a natural woodsman. He possessed a
fearless spirit, was of a merry and humorous turn, a characteristic of
the Burrow family, but he developed none of those traits which might
have foreshadowed the unenviable fame acquired in after-life.
James Buchanan Burrow, the fifth and youngest son, was born in 1858,
and was, therefore, four years the junior of his brother Rube, to whose
fortunes his own were linked in the pursuit of train robbing, and which
gave to the band the name of the “Burrow Brothers” in the earliest days
of its organization.
The facilities for acquiring education in the rural districts of the
South, half a century ago, were limited, and Allen Burrow grew to
manhood’s estate, having mastered little more than a knowledge of the
“three R’s,” and yet talent for teaching the young idea how to shoot
was so scant that Allen Burrow, during the decade immediately preceding
the late war, was found diversifying the pursuits of tilling the soil
with that of teaching a country school. Among his pupils was the
unfortunate postmaster of Jewell, Ala., Moses Graves, who was wantonly
killed by Rube Burrow in 1889. Many anecdotes are current in Lamar
County, illustrating the primitive methods of pedagogy as pursued by
Allen Burrow. It is said that the elder Graves, who had several sons
as pupils, withdrew the hopeful scions of the Graves household from
the school for the reason that after six months’ tuition, he having
incidentally enrolled the whole contingent in a spelling bee, they all
insisted on spelling every monosyllable ending with a consonant by
adding an extra one, as d-o-g-g, dog; b-u-g-g, bug.
Allen Burrow served awhile in Roddy’s cavalry during the civil war,
but his career as a soldier was brief and not marked by any incident
worthy of note. Soon after the close of the war he made some reputation
as a “moonshiner,” and was indicted about 1876 for illicit distilling.
He fled the country in consequence, but after an absence of two years
he returned and made some compromise with the Government, since which
time he has quietly lived in Lamar County. While possessed of some
shrewdness, he is a typical backwoodsman, with the characteristic
drawling voice and quaint vernacular peculiar to his class. Martha
Terry, the wife of Allen Burrow, claims to be possessed of the peculiar
and hereditary gift of curing, by some strange and mysterious agency,
many of the ills to which flesh is heir, and had she lived in the days
of Cotton Mather she might have fallen a victim to fire and fagot,
with which witchcraft in that day and time was punished. There are
many sensible and wholly unsuperstitious persons in northern Alabama,
where old Mrs. Burrow is well known, who believe in her occult powers
of curing cancers, warts, tumors and kindred ailments, by the art of
sorcery. Capt. J. E. Pennington, a prominent citizen, and the present
tax collector of Lamar County, tells of two instances in his own family
in which Dame Burrow removed tumors by simple incantation. The witch’s
caldron “boils and bubbles” on the hearthstone of the Burrow home, and
whether the dark and fetid mixture contain
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog;
Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,”
or what not, many good but credulous people come from far and near
to invoke the charm of her occult mummery, despite the fact that our
latter-day civilization has long since closed its eyes and ears to
the arts of sorcery and witchcraft. Here, amid the environments of
ignorance and superstition, evils resulting more from the inherent
infirmities of the rugged pioneer and his wife than the adversities of
fortune, the family of ten children was reared. It is from such strong
and rugged natures, uneducated and untrained in the school of right and
honesty, that comes the material of which train robbers are made.
CHAPTER II.
RUBE LEAVES LAMAR COUNTY, ALABAMA--HIS EARLY LIFE IN THE LONE STAR
STATE--HIS BROTHER JIM JOINS HIM--THE BELLEVUE, GORDON AND BEN
BROOK, TEXAS, TRAIN ROBBERIES.
Rube Burrow’s old companions in Alabama recall distinctly the day he
left Lamar County for Texas in the autumn of 1872. He left the old and
familiar scenes of his boyhood, full of hope and eager to test the
possibilities that Texas, then the Eldorado of the southern emigrant,
opened up to him. He was but eighteen years of age when he took up his
abode with his uncle, Joel Burrow, a very worthy and upright man, who
owned and tilled a small farm in Erath County, that State. In 1876 Rube
was joined by Jim Burrow, his younger brother, who remained in Texas
until 1880, when, returning to Lamar County, Alabama, he married and
resided there until 1884, when he rejoined his brother Rube in Texas,
taking his wife thither. Jim Burrow was a “burly, roaring, roistering
blade,” six feet tall, as straight as an Indian, which race of people
he very closely resembled, with his beardless face, his high cheek
bones and coal-black hair. He was in every way fitted for following
the fortunes of Rube, and had he not succumbed to the unhappy fate of
imprisonment and early death he would have been a formidable rival of
his brother Rube in the events that marked his subsequent career.
Rube worked awhile on his uncle’s farm, but soon drifted into that
nondescript character known as a Texas cowboy. Meantime, in 1876, he
married Miss Virginia Alvison, in Wise County, Texas, and from this
marriage two children were born, who are now with their grandparents in
Alabama, the elder being a boy of twelve years. This wife died in 1880,
and he again married in 1884 a Miss Adeline Hoover, of Erath County,
Texas. These events served to restrain his natural inclinations for
excitement and adventure, and it may be truthfully said that from 1872
to 1886 Rube Burrow transgressed the law only to the extent of herding
unbranded cattle and marking them as his own. In this pursuit he
traversed the plains of Texas, enjoying with an excess of keen delight
a companionship of kindred spirits, whose homes were in the saddle, and
who found their only shelter by day and by night under the same kindly
skies. As he grew to manhood he had given full bent to his love for
the athletic pursuits incident to life upon the then sparsely settled
plains of the Lone Star State. Taming the unbridled broncho, shooting
the antelope, and lassoing the wild steer, under whip and spur, he soon
gained fame as an equestrian, and was reckoned as the most unerring
marksman in all the adjacent country. With a reputation for all these
accomplishments, strengthened by an innate capacity for leadership,
Rube ere long gathered about him a band of trusty comrades, of which he
was easily the leader.
A short time prior to this period, at varying intervals, all Texas had
been startled by the bold and desperate adventures of Sam Bass and his
band of train robbers, with which Rube was erroneously supposed to have
been associated. Possibly inspired, however, by the fame which Sam
Bass had achieved, and the exaggerated reports of the profits of his
adventures, contrasted with the sparse returns from his more plodding
occupation, Rube was seized with a desire to emulate his deeds of
daring, and achieve at once fame and fortune.
At this time, December 1, 1886, his party, consisting of Jim Burrow,
Nep Thornton and Henderson Bromley, returning from a bootless excursion
into the Indian Territory, rode in the direction of Bellevue, a
station on the Fort Worth and Denver Railway. Here Rube proposed
to rob the train, which they knew to be due at Bellevue at eleven
o’clock A. M. Hitching their horses in the woods a few hundred yards
away they stealthily approached a water-tank three hundred yards
west of the station, and where the train usually stopped for water.
Thornton held up the engineer and fireman, while Rube, Bromley and Jim
Burrow went through the train and robbed the passengers, leaving the
Pacific Express unmolested. They secured some three hundred dollars
in currency and a dozen or more watches. On the train was Sergeant
Connors (white), with a squad of U. S. colored soldiers, in charge of
some prisoners. From these soldiers were taken their forty-five caliber
Colt’s revolvers, a brace of which pistols were used by Rube Burrow
throughout his subsequent career. Rube insisted on the prisoners being
liberated, but they disdained the offer of liberty at the hands of the
highwaymen and remained in charge of the crest-fallen soldiers, who
were afterwards dismissed from the service for cowardice. Regaining
their horses the party rode forth from the scene of their initial train
robbery, out into the plains, making a distance of some seventy-five
miles from the scene of the robbery in twenty-four hours.
The ill-gotten gains thus obtained did not suffice to satisfy the greed
of the newly fledged train robbers, and early in the following January
another raid was planned. At Alexander, Texas, about seventy-five miles
from Gordon, all the robbers met, and going thence by horseback to
Gordon, Texas, a station on the Texas and Pacific Railway, they reached
their destination about one o’clock A. M., on January 23, 1887. As
the train pulled out of Gordon at two o’clock A. M., Rube and Bromley
mounted the engine, covered the engineer and fireman, and ordered them
to pull ahead and stop at a distance of five hundred yards east of the
station. The murderous looking Colt’s revolvers brought the engineer to
terms, and the commands of the highwaymen were obeyed to the letter.
At the point where the train was stopped, Jim Burrow, Thornton, and
Harrison Askew, a recruit who had but recently joined the robber band,
were in waiting. As the train pulled up, Askew’s nerve failed him, and
he cried out, “For heaven’s sake, boys, let me out of this; I can’t
stand it.” Askew’s powers of locomotion, however, had not forsaken him,
and he made precipitate flight from the scene of the robbery. Rube
and Bromley marched the engineer and fireman to the express car and
demanded admittance, while the rest of the robbers held the conductor
and other trainmen at bay. The messenger of the Pacific Express Company
refused at first to obey the command to open the door, but put out
the lights in his car. A regular fusilade ensued, the robbers using
a couple of Winchester rifles, and after firing fifty or more shots
the messenger surrendered. About $2,275 was secured from the Pacific
Express car. The U. S. Mail car was also robbed, and the highwaymen
secured from the registered mail about two thousand dollars.
Mounting their horses, which they had left hidden in the forest hard
by, they rode off in a northerly direction, in order to mislead their
pursuers. Making a circuit to the south they came upon the open
plains, which stretched far away towards the home of the robber band.
The trackless plain gave no vestige of the flight of the swift-footed
horses as they carried their riders faster and still faster on to their
haven of safety, which they reached soon after daylight on the second
morning after the robbery.
The better to allay suspicion the robber comrades now agreed to
separate, and all made a show of work, some tilling the soil, while
others engaged in the occupation of herding cattle for the neighboring
ranch owners.
Rube and Jim Burrow, about this time, purchased a small tract of land,
paying six hundred dollars for it. They also bought a few head of stock
and made a fair showing for a few months at making an honest living.
The restless and daring spirit of Rube Burrow, however, could not brook
honest toil. As he followed the plowshare over his newly purchased
land, and turned the wild flowers of the teeming prairie beneath the
soil, he nurtured within his soul nothing of the pride of the peaceful
husbandman, but, fretting over such tame pursuits, built robber castles
anew.
While planting a crop in the spring of 1887 he had for a fellow workman
one William Brock, and finding in him a dare-devil and restless spirit
he recounted to him his successful ventures at Bellevue and at Gordon.
Thus another recruit was added to his forces, and one, too, who was
destined to play an important role, as subsequent events will show.
Time grew apace, and Rube wrote, in his quaint, unscholarly way,
affectionate epistles to his relatives in Lamar County, Ala., sending
them some of his ill-gotten gains. Two of these letters, written on the
same sheet of paper, the one to his brother, John T. Burrow, the other
to his father and mother, at Vernon, Ala., are here given _verbatim et
literatim_, and show that a collegiate education is not a necessary
adjunct to the pursuit of train robbing.
ERATH COUNTY, TEX., March 10, 1887.
_Dear Brother and family_:
All is well. No nuse too rite. the weather is good for work and
wee ar puting in the time. Wee will plant corn too morrow. Mee and
james Will plant 35 acreys in corn. Wee wont plant Eny Cotton Wee
hav a feW Ooats sode and millet. i am going too Stephens Vill too
day and i Will male this Letr. J. T. when you rite Direct your letr
too Stephens Vill Erath county and tell all of the Rest too direct
there letrs too the same place. i want you and pah too keep that
money john you keep $30.00 and pah $20.00. the Reason i want you to
hav $30 is because you have the largest family. john i don’t blame
pah and mother for not coming out here for they ortoo no there
Buisness. john i want you too rite too me. i did think i would Come
Back in march. i cant come now. Rite.
R. H. BURROW
too J. T. BURROW.
ERATH COUNTY, TEXAS, March 10, 1887.
_Dear father & mother_:
Eye will Rite you a few Lines. all is well. Elizabeth[A] has a boy.
it was bornd on the 28 of february. She has done well. Mother i
want you too pick mee out one of the prityest widows in ala. i will
come home this fawl. pah i want john thomas too hav 30 dollars of
that money eye want you too Buy analyzer a gold Ring. it wont cost
more than $4. i told her i would send her a present. pah that will
take a rite smart of your part of the money but it will come all
right some day for I am going to sell out some time and come and
see all of you. Rite.
R H BURROW
too A H BURROW.
[A] Elizabeth was the wife of his brother Jim.
“We have sowed a few oats,” wrote Rube. Whether this was meant as a
_double-entendre_, and referred not only to a strictly domesticated
brand of that useful cereal, but also to the “wild oats” which Rube and
Jim had been sowing, and which bore ample fruitage in after years, it
is useless to speculate.
In the midst of seed-time Rube tired of his bucolic pursuits, and
concluded to try his fortunes at Gordon again, and on the tenth of May
the chief gathered his little band at his farm in Erath County and,
under cover of a moonless night, rode northward to the Brazos River,
about fifty miles distant. They found to their disappointment that
the river was very high and was overflowing its banks, rendering it
impossible to cross it by ferry or otherwise, and spending the day in
the adjacent woodland, they rode back to Alexander the following night,
to await the subsidence of the floods, which, however, kept the Brazos
River high for some weeks.
Again, on the night of June 3d, by appointment, Henderson Bromley and
Bill Brock met Rube and Jim Burrow at their home near Stephensville, in
Erath County, and, after consultation, Ben Brook, Texas, a station on
the Texas and Pacific Railway, seventy-five miles south of Fort Worth,
was selected as the scene of their third train robbery.
After a hard night’s ride they were at daylight, on June 4th, within a
few miles of Ben Brook. Having ascertained that the north-bound train
would pass the station about 7 P. M. they secreted themselves in the
woods near by until dark, at which time they rode quietly to within a
few hundred yards of the station. Rube Burrow and Henderson Bromley
had blackened their faces with burnt cork, while Jim Burrow and Brock
used their pocket handkerchiefs for masks. Rube and Bromley boarded
the engine as it pulled out of the station and, with drawn revolvers,
covered the engineer and fireman, and ordered the former to stop at
a trestle a few hundred yards beyond the station. Here Jim Burrow
and Brock were in waiting, and the two latter held the conductor and
passengers at bay, while the two former ordered the engineer to break
into the express car with the coal pick taken from the engine, and
again the Pacific Express Company was robbed, the highwaymen securing
$2,450. The passengers and mail were unmolested.
Regaining their horses within thirty minutes after the train first
stopped at the station, the robbers rode hard and fast until noon of
the following day. Through woodland and over plain, ere dawn of day
they had fled far from the scene of the robbery of the previous night,
and a drenching rain, which commenced to fall at midnight, left not a
trace of the course of their flight. Here the robbers remained in quiet
seclusion, disguising their identity as train robbers by a seeming
diligence in agricultural pursuits, until September 20, 1887, when they
made a second raid on the Texas Pacific Road, robbing the train at Ben
Brook station again.
When Rube and Bromley mounted the engine, wonderful to relate, it was
in charge of the same engineer whom the robbers had “held up” in the
robbery of June 4th, and the engineer, recognizing Rube and Bromley,
said, as he looked down the barrels of their Colt’s revolvers, “Well,
Captain, where do you want me to stop this time?” Rube laconically
replied “Same place,” and so it was that the train was stopped and
robbed, the same crew being in charge, on the identical spot where it
had been robbed before. The messenger of the Pacific Express Company
made some resistance, but finally the robbers succeeded in entering his
car and secured $2,725, or about $680 each.
The highwaymen reached their rendezvous in Erath County, having
successfully committed four train robberies.
About the middle of November following, Rube and Jim paid a visit to
their parents in Lamar County, Ala., Jim taking his wife there and Rube
his two children. They remained in Lamar County some weeks, visiting
their relatives and walking the streets of Vernon, the county seat,
unmolested, as neither of the two men had at that time ever been
suspected of train robbing.
CHAPTER III.
THE GENOA, ARK., ROBBERY, DECEMBER 9, 1887--ARREST OF WILLIAM
BROCK--HIS CONFESSION.
Express Train No. 2, on the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas Railway, left
Texarkana, Ark., on the evening of December 9, 1887, at 5:50 P. M.,
fifty minutes late. Nothing unusual occurred until just as the train
began to pull out of Genoa, Ark., a small station thirty miles north of
Texarkana. Engineer Rue, on looking about, discovered two men standing
just behind him, with drawn revolvers, covering himself and fireman.
“What are you doing here?” asked Rue.
The answer was, “Go on! Don’t stop! If you stop I will kill you!” And
further: “I want you to stop about one and a half miles from here, at
the north end of the second big cut. I don’t want to hurt you or your
fireman, but we are going to rob this train or kill every man on it.”
Arriving at the spot designated, the leader abruptly said, “Stop!” The
engineer and fireman were then ordered down from the engine, and the
leader said, “Boys, how are you all?”
A voice from the brush, where a third man was in waiting, said, “All
right, boys!” The latter then walked towards the passenger coaches
and with a sixteen-shooting rifle opened fire in the direction of the
coaches. The two men in charge of the engineer and fireman were closely
masked, and were armed with a brace of forty-five caliber Colt’s
pistols, with Winchester rifles strapped across their backs. Messenger
Cavin, of the Southern Express Company, put out his lights and, like
Br’er Fox, “lay low” for some time. The robbers demanded admittance,
showering volleys of oaths and shots in one common fusilade. The heavy
Winchesters sped shot after shot through the car, the balls piercing
it from side to side, and yet young Cavin held his ground until Rube
Burrow ordered the engineer to bring his oil can and saturate the car
with the contents. The engineer was ordered to set fire to the car, but
before doing so he made an earnest appeal to the messenger, who agreed
to surrender, under the condition that he should not be hurt. The
robbers were some thirty minutes gaining access to the car. Having done
so, they secured about two thousand dollars.
This was the first train robbery in the territory of the Southern
Express Company for a period of seventeen years. Not since the robbery
of the Southern Express car on the Mobile and Ohio Railway at Union
City, Tenn., in October, 1870, by the celebrated Farrington brothers,
had highwaymen made a raid on a Southern Express train. The Pinkerton
Detective Agency having been given charge of the Union City, Tenn.,
case, and all the participants in that crime having been punished to
the full extent of the law, the management of the Southern Express
Company called to their aid at once the Pinkerton force.
Assistant Superintendent McGinn, of the Chicago agency, reached
Texarkana in about forty-eight hours after the robbery, and immediately
repaired to the scene of the occurrence. Genoa is a small railroad
station only a short distance from Red River. The winter rains had
filled the bottom lands with water, and the dense and impenetrable
growth of matted brush and vines, denuded of their foliage, made the
landscape a picture desolate and uninviting. Here in this wild woodland
came Superintendent McGinn, on the morning of the third day after the
robbery, to take up the tangled skein from which to weave the net for
the capture of the train robbers.
On the night of the robbery a report of the occurrence had been
telegraphed to the officials of the Express Company at Texarkana,
and a posse at once started to the scene of the robbery. A few miles
north of Texarkana the posse, being in charge of Sheriff Dixon, of
Miller County, came upon three men on the railway track, walking
towards Texarkana. This was about three o’clock A. M. The three
men were allowed to pass, when the sheriff’s posse, turning about,
commanded them to halt. The latter ran, taking refuge in a railway
cut some thirty yards distant, and the sheriff’s posse at once opened
fire, which was promptly returned, and a score or more of shots were
exchanged.
The night being very dark the firing on each side was done at random,
and no casualties ensued. After daylight that morning two rubber coats
and a slouch hat were found in the vicinity of the fight, and these
articles were subsequently identified as having been worn by the men
who robbed the train at Genoa. The hat bore the name of a firm in
Dublin, Texas, and the coats, which were new, bore the simple cost mark
“K. W. P.” Here was an important clew, proving that the robbers had at
least purchased the hat at Dublin. Thither the detectives went, with
the hat and coats, hoping to have the purchasers identified. Calling
upon the Dublin firm, diligent inquiry failed to disclose the purchaser
of the hat, the firm having sold hundreds of a similar style during the
season.
No trace of the purchasers of the coats could be found at Dublin, but
the detectives felt that they were on a hot trail and renewed their
exertions. To Corsicana, Waco, Stephensville and other points adjacent
they journeyed, exhibiting the coats, with the cabalistic letters,
until finally McGinn arrived at Alexander, Texas, as if carried there
by that intuition common to shrewd men of his profession, and plied
his inquires anew. Falling in with a salesman of the firm of Sherman
& Thalwell, to whom the coats were exhibited, the answer of the young
salesman, Hearn, was:
“That is the cost mark of Sherman & Thalwell. I put those letters,
‘K. W. P.,’ on myself.” He then seemed lost a moment in thought, and
resumed:
“We had a lot of that brand, and I sold a coat like that to one Bill
Brock, who lives, when at home, at his father-in-law’s, five miles from
Alexander, on the road to Dublin.” He further stated that Brock had
been away, he thought, up about Texarkana, and added:
“At the time Brock made the purchase there was a man with him to whom I
also sold a similar coat, and who afterwards went to Alabama, and who I
think is there now.”
Here was a ray of light upon the dark mystery of December 9th at Genoa.
The name, William Brock, had been copied from the hotel register at
Texarkana, where it was found under date of December 3d, six days
before the robbery, and was in the possession of the detectives who
were on the alert for the owner.
A few days prior to this occurrence another detective was shadowing a
man in Waco, Texas, who was spending money freely, and who answered
the description of one of the train robbers. Following him to Dublin,
Texas, the man was ascertained to be Brock, and here the detectives,
comparing notes, found themselves in possession of abundant evidence
upon which to arrest Brock. Before this was done, however, the
important disclosure was made that Brock had two companions, Rube and
Jim Burrow, and as these men answered the descriptions of the men who
committed the robbery at Genoa the detectives felt quite sure that
the names of all three of the robbers were at least known. Further
investigation, however, developed the fact that Rube and Jim Burrow
had recently gone to Alabama, and the immediate arrest of Brock was
determined upon.
At three o’clock on the morning of December 31, 1887, twenty-two days
after the robbery, Wm. Brock was arrested at his home near Dublin,
Texas. The detectives demanded admittance and Brock surrendered without
firing a shot, although he had a forty-five caliber Colt’s revolver
and fifty cartridges in a belt under his pillow, and also one of the
Winchester rifles used at Genoa. The prisoner was taken to Texarkana
and confronted with engineer Rue, who thoroughly identified him. He
was also identified by parties who saw him in the immediate vicinity
of Genoa. Brock could not stand the pressure brought to bear on him
by the wily detectives, and in the course of a few days made a clean
breast of his participation in the Genoa, Ark., robbery, confirming
the information already in possession of the detectives as to the
complicity of Rube and Jim Burrow in the daring adventure.
From Brock it was learned that Rube and Jim Burrow had, about November
15, 1887, gone to Lamar County, Ala. By agreement, Brock had joined
the Burrow brothers at Texarkana on December 3d, where all three
registered at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Brock in his own name, and Rube
and Jim as R. Houston and James Buchanan, respectively, each using
his middle name as a surname. They had robbed the train at Genoa on
the night of December 9th, and while walking toward Texarkana in the
early morning of the 10th had been fired upon by the sheriff’s posse.
Taken by surprise, he and Jim Burrow had dropped their coats, while
Rube had lost his hat. After going a few miles south of Texarkana they
separated, Brock going into Texas and Rube and Jim making their way
into Lamar County, Ala.
On the 29th of December Rube wrote the following letter to Brock, which
was received by Mrs. Brock, and turned over to the detectives after her
husband’s arrest:
Dec. 20-29-87.
_Mr. W. L. Brock_:
All is well and hope you the same Bill notis everything and let me
know Bill eye will sell you my place ef you want it at 7 hundred
let me here from ef you want it eye will have all fixt right and
send you the tittle in full let me here from you soon.
R. H. too W. L. B.
The figures 20-29-87 meant that Rube and Jim reached Lamar County on
the 20th and the letter was written on the 29th of December. William
Brock detailed to the detectives the history of the Bellevue and Gordon
robberies, as gathered from Rube, and of the Ben Brook robberies, in
which he himself participated. He seemed thoroughly penitent over his
crimes, and, after reaching Texarkana, disclosed the fact that he had
about four hundred dollars of the proceeds of the Genoa robbery, which
he proposed to and did restore.
Brock was a rough, uncouth-looking fellow, about five feet eleven
inches high; weighed about 180 pounds, and was a strong-chested,
broad-shouldered fellow, whose forbidding features made him a typical
train robber. He was about thirty-one years old, and although born in
Georgia, his parents moved to Texas when he was quite a child. He was
wholly illiterate, not being able to either read or write, and the
environments of corrupt companionship tended to fill his untutored
mind with evil only. Brock made an important witness in the trials
of the participants in the various train robberies in Texas, and was
afterwards given a comparatively light sentence as a punishment for his
offenses.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PINKERTONS AFTER RUBE AND JIM BURROW IN LAMAR COUNTY--THEIR
NARROW ESCAPE.
Ascertaining definitely that at the time of Brock’s arrest Rube and Jim
Burrow were not in Texas, but supposed to be in Lamar County, Ala.,
Superintendent McGinn, of the Pinkerton Agency, left Texarkana January
5, 1888, accompanied by two of his detectives, for the purpose of
capturing them.
On arriving at Fayette Court-House, Ala., McGinn summoned to his
aid the then sheriff of Lamar County, Fillmore Pennington, a very
courageous and efficient officer, and the party left for Vernon, the
county seat of Lamar County, about three o’clock P. M., January 8th.
The night was dark, and continuous rainfalls had rendered the roads
well-nigh impassable. It was not until ten o’clock that the distance
of twenty miles was made, and the detectives, under the guise of land
buyers, reached Vernon.
On the succeeding day a heavy rain set in about daylight and continued
throughout the day. The weather was, therefore, suited neither to the
outing of land buyers nor to a visit from Rube and Jim to the town,
as the sheriff had so confidently expected. The detectives kept their
rooms in the hotel during the day, inspecting a large assortment of
mineral specimens which were brought in by anxious owners of valuable
mining properties in that section.
That night it was determined to arrange a raid upon the house of Jim
Burrow, who had his family in a small dwelling about four miles from
Vernon, with the hope of finding both Rube and Jim. Accordingly, on the
morning of the 10th of January, Supt. McGinn, at 2:30 o’clock, left
Vernon for the house of Jim Burrow. Detectives Carney and Wing were on
horseback, with Deputy-Sheriff Jerry as a guide. Sheriff Pennington and
Detectives Williams and Wilbosky were in a wagon with McGinn. The party
drove to a point designated by the guide as being half a mile from Jim
Burrow’s house. Leaving a guard in charge of the horses, the posse
quietly surrounded the house, and while closing in upon the place, just
as the day was dawning, the guide informed the detectives that he was
mistaken in the house, but that it was another house, pointing to one
about a half mile distant, in which a light was seen. On arrival at
the second house the guide found himself again in error. It was then
daylight. The detectives were about to withdraw and get their horses
and wagon out of the way before they should be discovered, when they
found they were already observed by the inmates of the house. It was
then too late to retreat and await the cover of the succeeding night to
surround the house of Jim Burrow, then ascertained to be still about
two miles further on. Their only hope was to go at once and risk the
danger of being discovered while approaching the place after daylight.
Pushing forward, with great anxiety as to the result, the house they
were seeking was soon visible on the slope of a hill near the edge of
the timber. Deploying their forces they advanced quickly, and when
within about one hundred yards a crushing, tearing sound was heard in
the rear of the building. Jim Burrow had discovered their approach and
ran so swiftly from the house as to tear the door from its hinges.
Shot after shot from the Winchesters of the detectives was fired at
the young robber as he fled. Several of the bullets perforated his
clothing, but he succeeded in reaching the cover of the woods and
escaped, to the grievous disappointment of the detectives, whose
vigilance and energy had been defeated through the stupidity of the
guide.
After this escapade there was hurrying to and fro among the kinspeople
of the Burrow family, and preparations were set afoot to apprise Rube,
who was then at Kennedy, Ala., eighteen miles distant, of the attempt
to capture Jim, and of the fact that the detectives had visited his
father’s house in search of him. Henry Cash met Rube about one mile
out of Kennedy and recited the events of the morning. Cash was _en
route_ to Kennedy to make some preparation for his marriage, which was
to occur the following day. Rube awaited his return and the two then
rode back towards Vernon by bridle paths, and met Allen Burrow, who
had appointed a meeting-place for the two brothers, that night, near
the house of one Green Harris. From this point they started afoot at
midnight, January 10th, traveling in a south-easterly direction, and
before daylight were beyond the confines of Lamar County.
CHAPTER V.
LUBE AND JIM BOARD AN L. & N. RAILWAY TRAIN AT BROCK’S GAP--THEIR
ARREST AND THE SUBSEQUENT ESCAPE OF RUBE.
On the twenty-second day of January succeeding their escape from Lamar,
Rube and Jim boarded a Louisville and Nashville passenger train, south
bound, at Brock’s Gap, a few miles south of Birmingham. Meantime an
accurate description of the brothers had been obtained, and descriptive
circulars had been scattered broadcast by the officials of the Southern
Express Company, one of which was in possession of Conductor Callahan,
on whose train the robbers had taken passage. He was not certain of
their identity, and simply sent a telegram to Chief Gerald, of the
police force of Montgomery, to which point they had paid fare, which
read as follows: “Have special officer meet number five.”
Captain John W. Martin, one of the most efficient officers of the
force, met the train. The night was rainy, and Captain Martin wore a
rubber coat and slouch hat, which completely concealed his identity.
The train pulled into the depot just as Captain Martin arrived, and he
inquired of the conductor what was wanted. The conductor replied, “I
think those two fellows walking down the track there, and who boarded
my train at Brock’s Gap, are the Burrow brothers.”
Captain Martin at once called to Officer McGee, who was on duty at the
depot, and, like himself, attired in rain coat and slouch hat, and
imparted to him the information received. The officers then walked
toward the men, who were some distance away, and hailed them, saying:
“You can not go through that railroad cut at night.”
Rube replied: “We are going to the country to get timber, but would
like to get a boarding-house for the night.”
Captain Martin said, “We are going up town and will show you one.”
Rube, thinking the officers were railroad men, replied, “All right,”
and, joining them, the four men walked a distance of about a half a
mile, when, on reaching the police station, Captain Martin inserted the
key in the door, and while in the act of unlocking it Rube asked, “What
place is this?”
Captain Martin, shoving the door, which was adjusted with a heavy
spring, half open, with one hand, laid the other on Rube’s shoulder
and said: “This is the office of the Chief of Police, and you boys may
consider yourselves under arrest.”
“I reckon not,” replied Rube, and straightway made a break for liberty.
Captain Martin grappled with him, and the heavy door of the
station-house closing, caught his rubber coat in a vise-like grip, and
held him fast. Soon freeing himself, however, by pulling out of his
coat, he dashed after Rube, who had broken away, and after running
some thirty paces, turned and saw his brother Jim down, with a police
officer on top of him. Jim, in attempting to break away, had fallen, in
the scuffle with Officer McGee, over a street hydrant.
At this moment Rube, seeing the officer had started in pursuit, turned
and fled like a deer up the street. Neil Bray, a printer, being on the
opposite side of the street, joined the officer in the pursuit and was
shot by Rube, who twice fired upon him, one of the shots taking effect
in the left lung and nearly causing his death.
Out into the darkness Rube fled, leaving Jim in the hands of the
officers, and scaling a fence some hundred yards ahead he was soon lost
to his pursuers.
Jim was taken to police headquarters and gave his name as Jim Hankins,
and said the other man’s name was Williams, and he had only known him
three weeks. However, while _en route_ to Texarkana, he confessed his
identity, and said to Capt. Martin:
“I am Jim Burrow, and the other man is my brother Rube, and if you give
us two pistols apiece we are not afraid of any two men living.”
He further stated that while walking up the street from the depot he
became satisfied they were in the hands of the police, but as Rube
had the only pistol, he having failed to secure his in his sudden
flight from his home in Lamar County, he was looking for Rube to make
the first break. Rube, however, suspected nothing until he reached
the police station. When afterwards chided by friends for his failure
to assist Jim, in view of the fact that the latter was unarmed, Rube
replied that he thought the whole of Montgomery was after him.
The next day, realizing the _faux pas_ of the previous night, and
the notorious character of the fugitive, the entire police force of
Montgomery joined in the chase. The city, its suburban districts and
the adjacent country all swarmed with anxious pursuers.
No trace of Rube, however, was found until just before dark, when
Officers Young and Hill, having searched a negro cabin about five miles
south of Montgomery, without result, rode off in the direction of the
city. After leaving the house a negro boy came running after them and
informed the officers that the man for whom they were searching had
just gone into the cabin they had left. Rube, hungry and exhausted, had
seen his pursuers leave the cabin, and immediately thereafter went in
and asked for something to eat.
Young and Hill rode back at once in company with the boy, and
instructed him to go in and tell the man to come out. They were about
thirty paces in front of the cabin, when Rube came to the door,
and, looking out, saw a solitary horseman in front of the cabin. He
deliberately sat down in a chair in the doorway and pulled off his
boots, while Officer Young dismounted. Hill had covered the rear of the
cabin.
Taking his boots in his left hand, Rube held his trusty revolver in
his right. His chief forte was a running fight. With the agility of an
Indian he sprang from the cabin and bounded away to the swamps, which
were distant only about one hundred yards, and as he passed in front
of Officer Young the latter rested his breech-loading shot gun on his
saddle and fired the contents of both barrels in quick succession at
the fleeing desperado, when only about thirty yards distant.
Rube dropped his boots and hat, and to the chagrin of the officer, when
he picked them up, he found them filled with number eight birdshot. He
had substituted these for his loads of buckshot early in the day to
shoot a bird, and had forgotten the fact. Rube carried to the day of
his death the marks of the birdshot, which filled his neck and face,
but were powerless to stop his flight.
Fifty yards further on a countryman, who had joined the pursuing party,
sprang up from behind an embankment, and was in the act of taking aim
at twenty paces distant, his gun being charged with buckshot, when
Rube wheeled and covered him with his revolver. His pursuer dropped
flat to the earth and Rube escaped. He was wont to revert to this
incident frequently, afterward and laughingly state what was the truth,
that he had fired his last cartridge, and the intrepid courage with
which he turned and covered his pursuer with an empty revolver saved
his life.
Hatless and bare-footed, the friendless felon now found himself, at
dark of night, in a wilderness of swamp, whose treacherous waters were
covered with a tangled growth of brush and vines, and chilled with
the winter’s cold. Exhausted with the toils of the day’s flight, his
face and neck smarting with the keen pain of the wounds he had just
received, hungry and foot-sore, his body quivering with the biting
cold--could human flesh and blood be subjected to the frenzy of
sharper distress than that which faced Rube as he blindly picked his
footing through this _terra incognita_? Plodding through bog and fen,
full knee-deep with water, his progress was beset by indescribable
perplexities, and so it was nearly midnight when he emerged from the
marsh into a field, distant only about three miles from the point at
which he had entered it.
A flickering light in a negro cabin a few hundred yards away, on the
slope of a hill, gave friendly token of comfort within, but Rube,
fearing that some one of his pursuers might be sheltered there,
approached it with cautious step. All was still within, save the
snoring of the sleeping inmates, and in his dire extremity the outlaw
slowly pulled the latch-string which hung without and entered. With
bated breath he looked about him. The cheerful log fire alone beamed
for him a silent welcome. Noiselessly taking a chair he sat himself
before the coveted warmth of the lowly hearthstone, while the old
colored man and his family slept on, in blissful ignorance of the
presence of their midnight visitor.
The robber tarried only long enough to warm his chilled frame into
energy for the task of further flight, and after about one hour’s
stay he quietly donned the shoes of the black _pater familias_, and,
stealthily drawing an old quilt from a couch in which a brood of
pickaninnies slept, all unconscious of their loss, he wrapped it about
him, and, stepping silently out into the darkness, resumed his journey.
A few miles further on he stole a horse from the stable of a farmer,
and, mounting its bare back, rode hard and fast till daylight, when
he turned the animal loose in the road, and betaking himself to the
protection of the forests that covered the bottom lands of the Alabama
River, left no further trace of his course. Here his trail was lost to
the detectives, who, after an arduous and vain pursuit of several days,
abandoned all further effort in that vicinity.
CHAPTER VI.
RUBE BURROW RETURNS TO LAMAR COUNTY--JOE JACKSON JOINS HIM IN MARCH,
1888--THEIR TRIP INTO BALDWIN COUNTY, ALABAMA.
Rube Burrow, having effected his escape at Montgomery, and successfully
eluded pursuit, it was supposed by the detectives that he would go
down into southern Alabama or Florida, as the presence of himself and
brother at Montgomery seemed to indicate. Rube, however, was restless
and anxious concerning the fate of Jim, and at once made his way back
into Lamar County. Soon after reaching home he learned, for the first
time, of his brother’s incarceration at Texarkana, and also that his
old comrade, William Brock, had disclosed the whole history of their
operations in Texas, and particularly of the Genoa, Ark., affair.
Rube was heard to say: “Never mind; when I get my partner, Joe Jackson,
from Texas, I will wreak my vengeance upon the Southern Express
Company.” Rube knew, although he had never participated in any of the
many robberies which the Sam Bass gang had committed, that the name
of “Joe Jackson” was a terror wherever the fame of the Bass gang was
known, and that Joe Jackson was the only member of that brutal band
of highwaymen who had escaped justice when their chief, Sam Bass, was
shot, with a small remnant of his followers, in the streets of Round
Rock, Texas. It was thus he sought to herald, as the comrade he was
about to select to fill his brother’s place, the guerrilla who had
unfurled the black banner at Lawrence, Kansas, under the leadership of
the notorious Quantrell, and who had drifted into Texas to join Bass
and his unholy gang.
While in northern Texas in 1886, Rube had met a young Alabamian
who went under the name of Lewis Waldrip. Rube had Waldrip in his
employment while herding cattle, and had witnessed his unflinching
courage on several occasions while associated with him. Waldrip had, in
confidence, given Rube the story of the troubles which had caused him
to flee from his native State and seek refuge in Texas. Soon after his
return to Lamar County, in February, 1888, he wrote Waldrip to join him
there. The correspondence was conducted through Jim Cash, and about the
first of March, 1888, at the house of the latter, the two men, who had
separated in 1886 in Texas, met again for the first time. Rube recited
his recent history, and acting upon the advice of his friend, whom he
had christened “Joe Jackson,” the two left for southern Alabama, as
Rube had knowledge of the fact that the vicinity in which he was then
hiding was being constantly watched by detectives.
Leaving Lamar County afoot, the pair traveled through the woods until
they reached Columbus, Miss. They went thence, partly by rail and
partly by boat, to Baldwin County, Ala., locating at Dunnaway’s log
camp, on Lovette’s Creek, some forty miles from any railway line, and
in one of the most sparsely settled sections of southern Alabama. The
trail thither, by the circuitous foot journey out of Lamar County, had
been completely covered, and here Rube and his newly found comrade
were not only lost to the detectives, but to all the world besides,
save the little squad of day-laborers who gathered about the camp-fire
at nightfall, after the day’s labor was over. This rustic audience
Rube was wont to regale with many a humorous tale. Mr. Ward, as he was
familiarly called, was the hero of many an adventurous story, and the
very life and humor of the camp. Rube’s fame had preceded him, even
into this retired spot, and he would often bring up the subject of his
own outlawry, that he might get an expression from those about him as
to the thrilling adventures of which he himself was the hero.
After a stay of some three weeks, during which Rube and his partner
labored not only with diligence but with increasing skill (for here it
was that Rube was heard to say that John Barnes, who afterwards figured
somewhat in his final arrest, taught him how to saw logs), the camp
was broken up, Mr. Dunnaway moving his force to a point near Perdido, a
station on the Louisville and Nashville Railway.
Rube and Joe then, about May 1st, left the camp, for the reason,
perhaps, that the locality was more public, and for the additional
reason that Rube began to conceive the idea that he could find a safe
refuge among friends in Lamar County, and might render some help to his
brother, who was then a prisoner in Arkansas. Setting out, the two men
walked until they reached Forest, Miss., where Rube purchased horses
for the two. At Dixon, Miss., Joe, finding his horse a poor traveler,
traded him for the “snorting steed” which he subsequently rode in the
Duck Hill robbery, and which the detectives finally traced from the
scene of that robbery into Lamar County. From Dixon they rode via
Oxford, and thence to Berryhill’s, a brother-in-law of Rube Burrow, who
moved, soon after his marriage to Rube’s favorite sister, into that
section of Mississippi. Here they remained two days, and about the 15th
of May rode into Lamar County.
CHAPTER VII.
THE RIDE INTO ARKANSAS TO LIBERATE JIM BURROW--FAILURE AND RETURN
TO MISSISSIPPI.
On his arrival in Lamar County Rube Burrow anxiously inquired after
Jim’s fate. Jim Cash, the brother-in-law, had visited Little Rock,
where Jim was confined in the penitentiary for safe keeping, and had
learned that he would be taken about September 5th to Texarkana for
trial. Rube brooded over the fatal blunder which had resulted in Jim’s
capture at Montgomery, and blamed himself all the more because it was
against the judgment of his brother that they had boarded the unlucky
train. His proud spirit chafed at the thought, also, that he alone,
being armed, should have been forced to flee and leave him to his
unhappy fate. He therefore resolved, at all hazard, to attempt his
rescue.
One moonless night in the latter part of August Rube and Joe Jackson
rode out of Lamar County for the avowed purpose of taking Jim from
the hands of his captors while _en route_ to Texarkana for trial. Joe
Jackson, after his capture, told how Rube rose in his stirrups, as he
galloped away over the hills of Lamar County at dead of night, and
swore that he would carry the boon of freedom to his luckless brother
at whatever hazard or peril.
“We will board the train, shoot the officers down, and make Jim a free
man, or die in the attempt. Will you give me your hand and pledge me
your honor, Joe, to do your part?” asked Rube.
“I will,” answered Joe, and grasping each the other’s hand they rode
forth with renewed courage and hope.
On to Okolona, Miss., thence to Sardis, through Tate County, and on to
Helena, Ark., they crossed the Mississippi River at the latter point,
and rode thence in a southwesterly direction towards Pine Bluff, and
thence to Arkadelphia, Ark., a station on the Iron Mountain Railway,
sixty-five miles south of Little Rock.
Ascertaining definitely the date of his trial at Texarkana before
leaving Lamar County, they decided to attempt the rescue at one of the
smaller stations on the Iron Mountain Railway, either on the north or
south bank of the Oauchita River, where, if successful, pursuit could
not be so readily organized, and where the dense timber in the adjacent
bottoms would furnish ample cover for escape.
At Donaldson, at Malvern, and adjacent stations, these determined men
boarded train after train, with cocked revolvers secreted and ready for
the bold endeavor, and, finally, moving down to Curtis, a small flag
station, they learned that the last south-bound train of that date,
September 9th, was not scheduled to stop at Curtis, and their only
hope to search it was to ride to Arkadelphia, fifteen miles north.
It was only one hour before the train was due at Arkadelphia. Rube
said, “We will make the trip, Joe, or kill our horses.” The men were
well mounted, and defeat and disappointment had so far only sharpened
their energies for the difficult task before them.
This was Sunday night, and Rube knew it was the last train his brother
could be expected on, as his case was set for trial the following
morning. It was a ride which had the possible alternative of death
to the gallant steeds that bore them onward, liberty to an ill-fated
brother, or grief and chagrin at the failure of a project on which
Rube had set his heart with desperate devotion. Onward they rode,
at breathless speed, faster and still faster, till the hill-tops of
Arkadelphia hove in sight. At the same time the shrill whistle of the
engine announced the approach of the train bearing the manacled brother
toward Texarkana, and steaming into the railway station, paused but a
moment, as if to take breath, and bounded on, leaving the rescuers, who
were several hundred yards away, to their bitter disappointment.
CHAPTER VIII.
RUBE BURROW AND JOE JACKSON LEAVE ARKANSAS--THEY TURN UP AS COTTON
PICKERS IN TATE COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI.
Crestfallen and dispirited at the failure of his long cherished project
to release his brother Jim, Rube decided to abandon all further effort
in that direction and set out on the return journey. Joe Jackson
proposed to visit Hot Springs, but Rube did not care to expose himself
to the risk of being identified by the cosmopolitan population of that
American Baden-Baden, and resolved to return immediately to the east
side of the river. It has been popularly supposed that Rube Burrow was
accustomed to visit metropolitan places, frequent gambling houses and
saloons, and, with a reckless disregard of his personal safety, herald
himself as a cattle king, or play the role of gambler. Such was not the
case. Bold and fearless as he was in pursuit of his chosen vocation,
he kept aloof from populous localities. His long immunity from arrest
was due chiefly to the fact that, secluding himself in the wilds of the
forest and shunning his fellow-men as far as possible, he habited the
earth like a beast of prey.
The two men, on their return trip, traveled in a northeasterly
direction, avoiding the public highways wherever practicable. Crossing
White River at St. Charles, they rode leisurely on towards Helena, and,
under cover of darkness, crossed the river at that point about one week
after leaving Arkadelphia. Riding up the east bank of the Mississippi
to a point about fifteen miles north of Helena they debouched from the
river bottoms, pushing their way through bog and swamp for fifteen
miles or more, over ground never perhaps covered by horsemen before,
and where no sign of human habitation existed. The robbers were seeking
a secure retreat, and this they found in Tate County, Mississippi, on
the farm of Fletcher Stevens, about eighteen miles from Senatobia, a
station on the Illinois Central Railway. Meantime the detectives of the
Southern Express Company had searched every nook and corner of southern
Alabama, made several expeditions into Florida, and had also become
satisfied that Rube was not in Lamar County.
In the early part of September the fact was developed that a man
answering Rube’s description had been seen near St. Charles, Ark.,
and the trail was taken up and followed into Helena, and thence east
of the river a few miles, but all trace was lost in the ride through
the swamps, which Rube had correctly divined would foil his pursuers
if they should ascertain his presence in that locality. The farm of
Fletcher Stevens, located as it was in a thinly settled section, and
remote from railway lines, furnished a safe retreat for Rube and his
companion, and here they hired themselves as day laborers and began the
business of picking cotton about October 1, 1888. Rube was quite an
adept at picking cotton, but Joe proved rather an awkward hand, as Mr.
Stevens afterward reported; and so Rube, at the price of fifty cents
per hundred, earned the larger share of the compensation received for
their toil.
Strange to state, these men labored diligently and industriously on
this Tate County farm from October 1st till about December 1, 1888,
never once leaving the place. At rare intervals they would take their
pistols down into the swamps and practice shooting at a target with
one or two of their white co-laborers, and in a quiet way made some
reputation for their skill as marksmen. Both Rube and Joe, it is said,
could hit a silver dollar nine times out of ten, with their forty-five
caliber Colt’s revolvers, at a distance of seventy-five yards. During
their stay on the farm they passed for brothers, Rube assuming the name
of Charlie and Joe the name of Henry Davis. Their general demeanor
was so quiet and unobtrusive that they betrayed no suspicion of their
real identity; and although farmer Stevens, a very respectable and
law-abiding citizen, did not relish the fact that his hired help
carried such murderous-looking fire-arms, he gave little thought to
the matter. On or about the first of December the cotton pickers asked
for their pay, which was given them. Mounting their horses, which
were in fine condition from the long rest they had enjoyed, they rode
quietly away from the scene of their plodding labors.
CHAPTER IX.
JIM BURROW ARRAIGNED--TRIAL POSTPONED--HIS RETURN TO LITTLE ROCK
PRISON--LETTERS HOME--HIS DEATH IN PRISON.
Meanwhile Jim Burrow, at his preliminary examination at Texarkana,
soon after his capture, admitted his guilt when confronted with
the confession of Wm. Brock and the strong chain of circumstantial
evidence that had been woven about him. But while ruminating in the
penitentiary, during the interval preceding the fall term of the Miller
County Circuit Court, he had evidently reconsidered his original
purpose and determined on making a defense and risking the chances of a
jury trial. Consequently, on September 10, 1888, the day succeeding the
failure of Rube and Joe Jackson to effect his rescue at Arkadelphia,
his case was called for trial at Texarkana, on the charge of robbery
of the express car at Genoa, Ark. His attorney filed an application
for a continuance, on account of the absence of witnesses in Alabama,
by whom he alleged he could prove an alibi, and his case was thereupon
continued, and he was returned to the state-prison at Little Rock,
pending the spring term of the Court. Two days after his return there
he wrote to J. A. Cash and his wife the following letters:
SEPT. 14, 1888.
_Mr. J. A. Cash_:
I am not well but not very sick. I have put off my trial. you Send
$20.00 to my lawyers if you get the order from them. tell Elizabeth
and the children that I would like to see them. James you have all
the money on hand by the 1st of Oct. that you can. I will send one
of my lawyers back there on the 15th of November, he is about such
a lawyer as Frank Summers. You was speaking about furnishing me a
lawyer from that county. When my lawyer comes back to you send him
to Summers, he will take the case. don’t any of you come out until
I write for you to come--they got three bills against me for train
robbery, and the other two for attempt to murder. I think I will
come clear. You collect in my money as fast as you can.
J. B. BURROW.
* * * * *
_Mrs. M. E. Burrow_:
As I feel better this morning than I did yesterday I will write
you a few lines. Elizabeth you all rest easy about me for I think
I will best my case--my trial is set to come up the first Tuesday
in March. You have $200.00 on hand by the 15th of November to pay
my Lawyers with. One of them is a better lawyer than Frank Summers
is. So if you could employ Summers to help them in my case it would
be an advantage to me to have counsel from my own state. Tell pa
that I will answer his letter soon. Tell the children that I will
see them again. Brock’s trial was put off so he could be a witness
against me. Write all of the news.
J. B. BURROW to MRS. BURROW.
But Jim, not being a convict and therefore not required to labor,
soon began to chafe under the restraint of prison life, which was
aggravated by a depressing attack of nostalgia, which soon developed a
fever, resulting in delirium. During his ravings, which were continuous
for about a week, he talked about his wife and children, his home in
Alabama, the stolen money he had hidden, his boyhood adventures and his
experiences in Texas, but his statements were so incoherently mingled
that it was impossible to make an intelligent narration of them. On
October 5, 1888, his earthly career was terminated by death, and his
unhonored grave is surrounded by those of such hapless fellows as have
succumbed to the rigors of prison experience, leaving their bodies with
their captors, while their spirits have slipped through the bars and
gone for final trial before the Last Tribunal.
[Illustration: JIM BURROW.]
[Illustration: WILLIAM BROCK.]
CHAPTER X.
THE DUCK HILL, MISS., ROBBERY--THE KILLING OF PASSENGER
CHESTER HUGHES.
On the cold and cheerless night of December 15, 1888, the north-bound
express train of the Illinois Central Railway, which left New Orleans
for Chicago at seven o’clock A. M. pulled into the station of Duck
Hill, Miss., twenty-five miles south of Grenada, thirteen hours later.
The manner in which the engine was boarded and the train stopped is
best told in the language of Albert Law, the engineer in charge of the
locomotive. He says:
“I pulled out of Duck Hill Station at 10:05 o’clock P. M. The fireman
called to me to look out; that there was a car of cotton ahead on the
side track. I pulled slowly by, in order to avoid igniting the cotton
by sparks from the engine, and when I passed the cotton the fireman
said: ‘All right, let her go.’ I started ahead lively, and presently
saw the robbers climb up on my engine from the east side.
“The smaller man got on first. I thought they were tramps, and was in
the act of slowing up to put them off when the smaller man covered me
with a big pistol and said, ‘Don’t stop here! go on! go on!’ I then
saw that the men were masked. I asked, ‘Where do you want to stop!’ He
replied, ‘I’ll tell you where to stop.’ I pulled along, and when we had
gone about a mile he said:
“‘Stop here--stop now!’ I put the air on full and stopped as quickly as
I could.
“The little man did all the talking. When we stopped he got down on the
ground and fired his revolver two or three times. The train had hardly
stopped when he commenced shooting. The other man said, ‘Get down!’
My fireman and myself were then made to go ahead, on the east side of
the train, to the express car. Here they stopped us, and the tall man
called out to the messenger, ‘Open up! Open up!’ The messenger looked
out of the door and the tall man said, ‘Where is your other man?’ The
messenger said, ‘I have no other man--no one here but me,’ to which the
reply was, ‘Help this man into the car!’ The messenger being covered by
the revolver of the larger man, extended his hand and helped him into
the car.
“About this time Mr. Wilkerson, the conductor, came out of one of the
rear coaches with his lantern, and the smaller man, who stood guarding
us, told me to tell him to go back. I did, and the conductor went back,
but in a couple of minutes came out again. I saw two forms get out of
the car. They had no lights. I said, ‘You had better go back, or they
will shoot you; they are robbing the express car.’
“The fireman and I were between the robber and the rest of the train.
He kept us in front of him as a sort of breastwork. Some one in the
direction of the passenger coaches called out: ‘Law, where are you?’
When I answered a voice said: ‘Look out! I am going to shoot!’ I
stepped back from the train and the firing commenced, and I broke and
ran for the woods, which were close by.”
Meantime the robber who had entered the car handed a sack to Southern
Express Messenger Harris and bade him deliver up the contents of
his safe. At this juncture the firing on the outside of the car had
commenced, and advancing to the door, still keeping an eye on the
messenger, the robber fired three shots into the air. Conductor
Wilkerson had, on first coming out, taken in the situation, and going
back into the coaches announced to the passengers that the train was
being robbed, and asked who would assist him. Chester Hughes, a brave
young fellow, from Jackson, Tenn., arose quickly and said, “I will,
if I can get anything to shoot with.” Two colored men seated near by
had each a thirty-eight caliber Winchester rifle, and these weapons
were quickly gathered by the conductor and his gallant passenger, and
loading them with cartridges furnished them by the owners they went
forth to do battle with the robbers. It was conductor Wilkerson who had
warned the engineer to protect himself, and he fired the first shot at
the robbers.
Advancing abreast of each other these brave men fired shot after shot
at the dark form of the robber who stood as a sentinel on the outside
of the car, and who unflinchingly held his ground, returning with
steady aim charge after charge from his trusty revolver, until finally
young Hughes dropped his Winchester, and exclaiming “I am shot!” fell
to the earth. Wilkerson raised the brave young fellow to his feet and
dragged his unconscious and bleeding form into the coach, and returning
to the steps of the front coach renewed the firing at the robbers.
The robber had, meantime, secured the money from the messenger (about
two thousand dollars), and backing out of the car, still holding his
pistol on the messenger, joined his comrade on the ground, and under
the fire of the conductor both retreated to the woods hard by.
Chester Hughes had been in charge of a widowed sister, who, with
several small children, were _en route_ to Jackson, Tenn. The sister
knew nothing of her brother’s participation in the fight with the
robbers until he was carried back into the coach, when she prostrated
herself in affectionate embrace over his body, from which life was fast
ebbing away. The scene was an agonizing and affecting one.
The unerring aim of the robber had sent three shots through the body of
young Hughes, all entering the stomach within a radius of six inches,
and the unfortunate but daring young fellow lived only a few minutes.
The same train on which he had erstwhile embarked in the vigor of
health and buoyant spirits, bore his lifeless form to the home of his
widowed mother at Jackson, Tenn.
The Southern Express Company and the Illinois Central Railway promptly
presented his grief-stricken mother with a fitting testimonial of
appreciation for the heroic conduct of her son. While
“On Fame’s eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead,”
the name of Chester Hughes will be enrolled among the bravest of the
brave.
The whole country was electrified with horror at the brutal murder of
a passenger on one of the great trunk lines of railway, in one of the
most populous districts of the South, by train robbers, and it was
determined that no expense or labor should be spared in bringing the
criminals to justice. General Manager C. A. Beck and Superintendent
J. G. Mann, of the Illinois Central Railway, were in Memphis in a
special car at the time. During the night a violent and very general
rain storm had prevailed, and the telegraph wires were down in many
places. The news of the robbery did not, therefore, reach Memphis
until about midnight. The railroad and express officials remained at
the telegraph office all night, seeking the details, and left about
daylight for the scene of the robbery. The aid of the Pinkertons was
again summoned, and several of the most expert detectives of the
Chicago agency soon arrived at Duck Hill.
About a month prior to the Duck Hill robbery the United States Express
Company had been robbed at Derby, Miss., a station sixty-five miles
north of New Orleans, on the Queen and Crescent Railway, by Eugene
Bunch, a man who is supposed by some persons, even at this day, to
be identical with Rube Burrow. Eugene Bunch, a native of Louisiana,
and long a resident of Texas, bore a remarkable resemblance to Rube
Burrow. The description, about thirty-six years old, weight one hundred
and seventy pounds, height six feet one inch, light complexion,
auburn hair, long, drooping mustache, blue eyes, raw-boned and
stoop-shouldered, would fit either Rube Burrow or Eugene Bunch. Apart
from this personal resemblance they bore nothing else in common except
the title of train robber. Their habits and methods of life were
strikingly dissimilar. Bunch was a man of some education, had taught
school in Louisiana and Texas, and was for a long period of time a
County Court Clerk in Texas, while Burrow was a coarse, unlettered
fellow, and it may be stated, as a certainty, that these men never had
any association as train robbers or otherwise.
The Pinkerton detectives, on their arrival at Duck Hill, were unable
to find a trace of the robbers. There was no clew from which to
begin a search for them. Whence the robbers came, whither they had
gone, whether on horseback or afoot, was not known. At this juncture
Detective D. C. Hennessey, of New Orleans, who recently met his death
at the hands of assassins in that city, and a man of undoubted ability
in his profession, having received a descriptive circular of the
robbers, telegraphed the officials of the Southern Express Company as
follows: “Description of the robbers received. I am well aware as to
who they are, and am satisfied I can get them.”
A conference was at once arranged with Hennessey, who declared the Duck
Hill robbery to be the work of Eugene Bunch. An unfortunate combination
of circumstances here ensued to corroborate Hennessey’s view. Bunch
answered Burrow’s description with great exactness. The former was
reliably ascertained to have been in northern Louisiana a few days
prior to the robbery, and, therefore, within easy reach of Duck Hill;
Bunch had an intimate friend who answered Engineer Law’s description of
the smaller man who stood guard over him at Duck Hill.
The detectives had, meantime, traced two men riding out south from the
scene of the robbery in the direction of Honey Island, in the Pearl
River, a favorite resort with Bunch; and, still more remarkable, one of
the horses ridden corresponded with the one owned by Bunch’s comrade
in Louisiana, who was known to have assisted him in his flight from
Derby, Miss. The chase that followed, therefore, under the leadership
of the Pinkertons, was organized to find Bunch, and not Burrow. From
New Orleans to Texas, to Monterey and Mexico City, to Los Angeles and
San Diego, and even to San Francisco, the detectives pursued Bunch
until, just as his capture seemed certain at San Francisco, he eluded
the detectives by taking a Pacific coast steamer. The chase was then,
after months of labor, abandoned.
Meantime, in a quiet way, the detectives of the Southern Express
Company were at work on the theory that Rube Burrow was the leader
in the robbery at Duck Hill. It was discovered that Rube Burrow and
Joe Jackson rode away from the farm of Fletcher Stevens in Tate
County, Miss., on December 1, 1888, and after paying a visit to Rube’s
brother-in-law, Berryhill, who lives eighteen miles from Oxford,
proceeded to Water Valley, Miss., where they spent the night; and
that going thence to Duck Hill they robbed the train in the manner
described. After mounting their horses, tethered in the woods some half
a mile from the spot on which the robbery occurred, they rode through a
drenching rain a distance of forty miles by daylight. The next day they
camped in the brush, divided the spoils of the robbery, and at sundown
resumed their journey. After another hard night’s ride they reached
the vicinity of the Pearl River, near Philadelphia, Miss. Here, fearing
the news of the deed at Duck Hill had preceded them, and that the
detectives might be in waiting at the bridge, they turned their horses
into the swamps and two miles north of the bridge swam the swollen
current of Pearl River. Reaching the opposite bank, they continued
their journey through the wilds of the forest for a few miles, and
turning from the southwesterly course on which they had ridden for two
days, they rode in a northeasterly direction, traveling most of the
distance at night, until they reached Lamar County. Here they remained
in quiet seclusion until the tragic event recorded in the next chapter
occurred.
CHAPTER XI.
THE COLD-BLOODED MURDER OF MOSES GRAVES, THE POSTMASTER OF
JEWELL, ALABAMA.
The reader may well ask what the detectives of the Southern Express
Company were doing while these men remained in Lamar County and the
adjacent country, from the time of the Duck Hill robbery until the
summer of 1889.
In the contiguous counties of Lamar, Fayette and Marion the kindred of
the Burrow family abounded on every hand. The homes of his kinsmen,
notably Cash, Terry, Barker, Smith and Hankins, not only furnished a
safe refuge for the robbers, but they were worshiped as heroes, and
each household vied with the other in its fealty and loyalty to the
robber chief. “Rube never robs a poor man,” they were often wont to
say, forgetting that one never gets blood out of a turnip. These people
were of a thriftless, restive spirit, and among them were many shrewd
and cunning natures, who became the paid scouts of the outlaws. A code
of signals was established, and the appearance of a detective or a
stranger of any kind in that section was at once ascertained, and the
information conveyed to the outlaws. The firing of a gun in a certain
locality, the cracking of a whip, the blowing of a horn, and the
deep-toned “ah-hoo,” as well as scores of other signals, all had their
meaning. They gave the fugitives warning of the approach of danger;
and so, when occasional raids were made, a house was surrounded, a
trail was covered, or some solitary scout from among Rube’s clansmen
was encountered, the stillness of the air would be broken by a signal
which plainly told the detectives that their presence was known and
the robbers were on the alert. It was even impossible to trail the
messengers who carried rations to the robbers while in camp, for these
were stored in the crevices of rocks and in the trunks of trees, from
which coverts, at propitious times, the food would be taken.
Detective Jackson once followed Jim Cash, with a supply of provisions,
to a ravine some distance from Cash’s house, and saw them hidden away
in the cavernous depths of a hollow log. He concealed himself within
one hundred yards of the spot, and, knowing Rube was in that locality,
felt sure he would be able to pick him off with his trusty Winchester
when he came for his rations. Jackson crouched behind the huge trunk
of a tree, in breathless expectation of Rube’s appearance, when a
shot fired from the vicinity of Cash’s house dashed his hopes. Half
an hour later Cash walked cautiously down the hill, took the food
away, and tied a flaming red cloth to the top of an adjacent bush,
thus exhibiting for Rube the red signal of danger. Cash had, on his
return, with the cunning of his class, discovered strange footsteps on
his trail, and rightly divined that his movements had been watched.
Although the detective took down the signal, Rube had doubtless seen
it. If not, acting on the signal previously given, Rube missed his
dinner that day.
Thus fed and harbored, the outlaws remained in Lamar County and the
adjacent country all the spring and summer of 1889, without any event
of note occurring until on the 7th of July, when Rube Burrow murdered,
in cold blood, the postmaster of Jewell, Ala.
Rube had concluded that a wig and false whiskers were necessary in his
line of business. His robberies were now of such frequent occurrence
that he sought to disguise himself more closely, and after writing for
a catalogue and selecting what he desired in that line, he wrote the
following letter to a Chicago house:
June 1, 1889.
_Mr. Sthrel_:
I just Received your catalogue of wigs and will order Wig and Bird.
Pleas ship one set of Bird, 4 or 5 inches and one Wig, Cullor of
goods light Red, slieghtley Grey, and croped hair. Ship goods to
Sulligent (express office, ship at once) Lamar county Ala, too
W. W. Cain.
P. S.--Please find Five Dollars inclosed. eye Hav no sample of Hair.
Rube had written for the catalogue and for the wig in the name of W. W.
Cain. The former letter was written from Jewell post-office, and as the
name “Sulligent” was not plainly written, the shipper sent the parcel
containing the wig and beard by mail to Jewell, Ala.
Meantime Jim Cash had made several inquiries for the catalogue to
Cain’s address before it arrived. On the arrival of the parcel
containing the wig and whiskers, the wrapper being torn the contents
were exposed. Naturally great curiosity was excited as to the ownership
of these queer looking articles. The rumor soon gained currency that
Jim Cash had been inquiring for mail for W. W. Cain. The postmaster
recalled having delivered him the catalogue, and this parcel was
supposed to be his property. Cash was told that the contents had been
examined, and that the postmaster declared he intended to arrest the
party who called for the parcel.
When this information was imparted to him by Cash, Rube became
greatly enraged. He swore he would go to the post-office in person,
get the mail, and kill Graves. Accordingly he left the home of his
brother-in-law, Cash, about daylight on the 7th of July for Jewell,
Ala., distant about six miles. Rube was known to Moses Graves, who kept
the post-office in connection with a country store, and who was a quiet
and inoffensive citizen.
Rube arrived at Jewell early, but the full-orbed day was not a fit
time for the execution of the dark deed upon which he was bent. He
lurked about the outskirts of the quiet little village until the shades
of night had begun to fall, and creeping, with the stealthy step of
the assassin, towards the post-office, he entered. Moses Graves, the
postmaster, and Rube, companions and playmates in their boyhood, stood
face to face, and exchanging a silent recognition, Rube said: “Have you
any mail for W. W. Cain?”
“Yes,” answered Graves, “but I can not deliver it to you.”
Instantly Rube drew his heavy revolver and fired, the ball entering the
stomach and piercing him through and through.
“I’ll teach you how to open my mail,” said Rube.
Graves staggered towards a chair, and falling into it, said: “Rube
Burrow, you have killed me.”
The murderer then turned, and leveling his pistol at the head of a
young girl who was an assistant in the post-office, said: “Get my mail
or I will blow your head off.”
The frightened creature, in her terror, could not find the parcel until
Graves, pointing to it with uplifted hand, bade her get it, and sinking
to the floor soon expired.
Graves’s wife, at the firing of the shot which killed her husband,
rushed in from an adjoining room. Despite Rube’s threat to kill her
if she entered she flew to the assistance of her dying husband. He
was conscious, however, long enough for his ante-mortem statement
to be carefully taken, in the presence of witnesses, certifying to
the fact that Rube Burrow was his murderer. Rube walked out of the
town unmolested, and at ten o’clock that night reached the house of
Jim Cash, his hands stained with the blood of one of Lamar County’s
most respected citizens--the perpetrator of a deed as wanton and as
cold-blooded as ever blackened the annals of crime.
Rube and Joe were not amiss in surmising that the officers of the law
would swoop down upon them. As soon as Rube returned to Jim Cash’s,
about ten o’clock that night, he informed Joe Jackson, his partner, of
the events of the evening. The latter had advised strongly against the
policy of taking Graves’s life, and warned Rube of the consequences;
but Rube’s spirit was full of revenge, and he determined upon the
murder.
All of northern Alabama was aroused with indignation at the cruel and
wanton murder, and ex-Sheriff Pennington, heading a posse of determined
citizens, went into the Burrow neighborhood a few days afterward and
made an earnest endeavor to capture the outlaws. Too much praise can
not be accorded this brave and gallant man, and had the laws of Alabama
admitted his re-election to a second term it is more than probable that
the career of these train robbers in Lamar County would have been less
bold and protracted.
The homes of Allen Burrow, John T. Burrow and Jim Cash were all raided,
and these men, who were openly aiding and abetting the outlaws, were
arrested and taken to the Vernon jail. Threats of releasing the
prisoners reached the officers, and the excitement grew with each
passing hour. A strong guard was put around the Vernon jail to prevent
this, and at the same time it was whispered that the prisoners were in
imminent danger of being lynched.
At this juncture the Governor of Alabama, in answer to a call made
upon him by the sheriff of Lamar County, sent a military company from
Birmingham to keep the peace. The troops remained at Vernon pending the
arraignment and trial of these men, who were released, however, under
bond, and being subsequently tried, were acquitted of the charge of
being accessory to the murder of the postmaster.
CHAPTER XII.
RUBE SMITH JOINS RUBE BURROW AND JOE JACKSON--THE BUCKATUNNA ROBBERY.
The murder of the postmaster at Jewell, Ala., was done by Rube Burrow
in a spirit of bravado, and, doubtless, with the design of terrorizing
the law-abiding people of that section into such a state of timidity
as would give additional safety to his chosen place of refuge, and at
the same time knit him all the more closely to the lawless band of his
followers, who not only connived at his crimes but profited from the
spoils of his misdeeds.
Despite the vigilant and unremitting search of the detectives the
presence of the bandit in Lamar County had not been definitely known
until the murder of Graves occurred. The officials of the Southern
Express Company determined, therefore, to either capture Rube or drive
him from Lamar County. The task was a difficult one, in view of the
fact that Rube never slept under a roof nor broke bread at any man’s
table in Lamar County after the murder at Jewell. Soon thereafter,
when invited by his father to come into his house, on one occasion, he
refused, saying, “I might as well give myself up.”
Detectives Jackson and Burns, of the Southern Express Company, about
this time went into Lamar County and literally camped there. They
endeavored by every possible means to discover the whereabouts of the
outlaws by shadowing the persons who communicated with them from time
to time, but the army of scouts in the secret service of the cunning
desperado was so well trained, the field in which they operated so
extensive, that the only result obtained was to force them to leave.
About September 1st Rube and Joe concluded to depart. A few days before
their departure, however, Mrs. Allen Burrow brought Rube a message from
Rube Smith, to the effect that the latter wanted to see him.
Rube Smith is a son of James Smith, who lives in Lamar County, near
Crews Station, and about eight miles from the home of Allen Burrow. He
is a first cousin of the Burrow brothers. Smith was about twenty-eight
years old, five feet eight inches high, weighed one hundred and sixty
pounds, and bore a very bad reputation in all that section. He had
never followed any legitimate occupation, except that, for a short
period in 1883, he had been an itinerant photographer, moving about
from place to place, and making cheap photographs in country towns
of northern Alabama. In the fall of 1888, however, he was indicted,
with James McClung and James Barker, an uncle, for robbery from the
person of a Mr. Johnson, a respectable old farmer of Lamar County.
Smith and party went to farmer Johnson’s home about nightfall, with
their faces masked, and at the point of their revolvers demanded his
money. The old man hesitating, was cruelly beaten, and at last divulged
the hiding-place of his money, some three hundred dollars, which the
robbers secured. They left their victim bleeding and maimed, lying
upon the floor, where he remained until the next morning, when kindly
neighbors came to his assistance. Rube Smith then became a fugitive
from justice.
Burrow, knowing of the presence of the detectives in the vicinity,
suspected that Smith was being used by the officers to entrap him.
After considering the matter several days he sent, through his sister,
a message to Rube Smith that he would meet him at the hour of midnight,
September 4th, in Fellowship church-yard, a point about four miles
from Vernon. Thither Burrow and Joe Jackson repaired early after dark,
on that night, for the purpose of forestalling any plan which the
detectives might have to capture them through Smith. The watch was
set, and each, by turn, stood sentinel in this quiet and lonely spot,
awaiting the appointed hour. Smith, in due course, appeared as agreed.
He was alone, and Burrow was soon assured that his proposal to join him
was genuine.
There, in the graveyard of Fellowship church, where the body of the
famous outlaw now lies buried, at the solemn hour of midnight, the
compact which linked Rube Smith’s fortunes with his own was made. There
was no subscribing to the black oath, no signing in letters of blood,
but with the skillfulness of a master Rube Burrow inducted his young
kinsman into the office of train robbing to which he had elected him.
He described the preliminary step of boarding the engine and getting
the “drop;” the method of “holding up,” and all the subtle artifices of
the craft, in such a masterly style that the new recruit smacked his
lips in anticipation of the rich dish spread before his mental vision,
and, after the manner of little Jack Horner, he mentally “put in his
thumb, and pulled out a plum, and said, what a good boy am I.”
Setting out, therefore, with the two-fold object of avoiding the
detectives in Lamar County, and of robbing a train, the three men
journeyed southward, but without any particular destination in view.
Going down the west bank of the Tombigbee River, they traveled a
distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, to Buckatunna, Miss., on
the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, seventy-three miles north of Mobile.
After a careful deliberation of the matter, Rube Burrow selected
Ellisville, Miss., a point on the Queen and Crescent Railway,
sixty-five miles south of Meridian, and distant fifty-five miles east
across the country, as the point for making his seventh train robbery.
Leaving the Mobile and Ohio Railway at Buckatunna on the fourteenth
day of September, the men walked towards Ellisville, arriving there on
the night of the 17th of September. Here Rube Burrow concluded, after
finding there were three trains daily each way on that road, that there
was no money in robbing a train on the Queen and Crescent Railway.
He argued that the shipments would be divided up between the several
trains, and no one train would carry much money. He had been so often
disappointed in the amounts obtained that he was now planning, with
great care, to make a big haul. He concluded, therefore, to reverse
his course, return to Buckatunna, and rob the Mobile and Ohio, as the
schedule on that line indicated only a single daily express train each
way. Accordingly the robbers resumed their journey towards Buckatunna,
through the “Free State of Jones.”
The county of Jones, Miss., bears to this day the appellation of the
“Free State of Jones.” During the late civil war the county seceded
from the Confederacy and set up an independent government of its own.
Here, in the famous Bogue Homer swamp, which covers one-third of the
area of the county, hundreds of Mississippians, and Alabamians from
across the border, declared themselves non-combatants, and gathering
their families about them, set up a military government of their own.
Fortified within this inaccessible wild land, by the aid of their
flint locks, they defied Confederate and Federal alike, and in the
solitude of a peacefulness disturbed only by an occasional unsuccessful
raid upon them, lived on, unmindful of the fate of the Republic. One
may ride, at this day, over the public road, so-called, from Ellisville
to Buckatunna, sixty miles, and in all that distance he will find no
sign of human habitation save at intervals of ten miles or so a rude
log hut, and here and there a rosin orchard.
Through this lonely woodland, to the music of the soughing pines, Rube
Burrow, Joe Jackson and Rube Smith wended their way from Ellisville to
Buckatunna. On Sunday night about dark they reached an abandoned log
cabin on the farm of one Neil McAllister, a very intelligent colored
man, who lives three miles from Buckatunna station. Neil found the
men snugly quartered in this out-house early Monday morning, and had
frequent interviews with them during their stay of forty-eight hours on
his premises.
The robbers visited a trestle at Buckatunna Creek, two miles south of
the station of that name, during Monday, and, after carefully maturing
their plans, agreed to rob the south-bound express train, due on
Wednesday, September 25th, about 2:30 A. M., at the trestle, one and a
half miles south of the station.
Leaving Neil McAllister’s cabin soon after dark the trio passed through
Buckatunna and went to the trestle, where they remained until the
north-bound train passed at midnight. Rube Burrow and Rube Smith then
walked to the station, where, on the arrival of the south-bound train,
in charge of Conductor Scholes and Engineer Therrill, the two men
quietly boarded the engine as it pulled out from the station.
The cool and determined manner in which the work was done is well
described by Zack Therrill, the engineer, in his statement taken by the
express officials next day.
STATEMENT OF ENGINEER THERRILL.
Just as I was pulling out of Buckatunna I heard a voice on my engine,
and I thought the fireman was speaking to me. I turned to find the
fireman and myself covered with pistols by two men. The larger of the
two men, who had his pistol presented at me, said, “Pull on out!” After
I had run several hundred yards he said, “Don’t be uneasy.” I told him
I was not uneasy. He said: “I am going to rob this train or kill every
man on it. Stop the train on the trestle beyond the bridge, so the
passengers can’t get off. I will kill every one that hits the ground.”
I stopped as directed, and was ordered to get down from the engine.
When I got down, there was a man standing opposite the gangway on the
ground, whom I will designate as number three. He backed towards the
express car door. The man number one, who had been on the engine,
said, “Call the express messenger.” Just then robber number three, who
was in front, covered the messenger, who was sitting on the opposite
side of the car, with his back toward us.
The conductor came out at this moment and asked what was the matter.
The big man, number one, then fired a shot over my head towards the
conductor and said, “Get back or I will kill you!” The messenger had
not yet opened the door, but was covered by the pistol of number three.
The big man, number one, then covered the messenger as soon as he had
shot. The fireman was standing behind me, with a coal pick, covered by
number two, who had been on the engine. The messenger shoved the grated
door back, the wooden or outside door being already open. The messenger
could not have stepped aside, as he was covered by two pistols. Number
one then said, “Give me your hand and pull me in the car. Handle my
hand carefully, as there are corns on it.” He was in the car five or
six minutes. Just after he got in the car the conductor again called to
know what was the matter. Number three said, in a low tone of voice,
“Look out, I will settle him.” He went forward a few paces, called
out “Come and see,” squatted and fired one shot. He then got up, ran
forward about ten feet, and laid down flat on his stomach. He laid
there until number one, in the car, told the messenger to get out of
the car, which he did, in front of the robber, who gave him the bag
with its contents to hold, while he himself got out.
Number one then said to me, “Go to the engine with me and pull the mail
car off the trestle.” I told him it was off, and told him if it was
not off I did not have steam enough to move the train. He then said
to number two, “Take the fireman to the engine,” and added, “Wait, I
will go with you.” He told the fireman to get on the engine, and told
me to stay on the ground. He told the fireman to get his fire started,
ordered number two to stay with the fireman, and instructed me to go
with him to the mail car. He told the fireman, before he started off,
not to move the engine until he came back, and said he would kill me if
it started. I went back to the mail car as instructed, and when we got
to the express car he instructed number three to bring the messenger up
to the mail car. Number three took the bag from the messenger as soon
as he struck the ground. I called the mail agent, as instructed, who
was inside of the car. As soon as he appeared he was covered by number
one, who ordered me to go into the mail car ahead of him, which I did.
He ordered the mail agent to get up his registered letters, and said to
him, “You have been hiding them.”
The mail agent replied, “No, I have only turned the light down.” The
mail agent showed him the registered mail, saying, “There it is,” and
added, “You are doing the worst thing you ever did in your life. You
will get the U. S. Government after you, and there are not $20,000 in
the pile.” “That don’t make any difference,” said the robber; “I will
take them anyhow.” He left the car and said to the mail agent, “If you
don’t want to get hurt, shut the door and keep it shut until the train
leaves here.” He gave the packages he got out of the mail car to number
two, who was guarding the fireman, and told me to get up on my engine
and pull out. I had started up on the engine when he told me to sit in
the gangway between the tender and engine. Number one then said: “Do
anything you want to get steam up.”
We were there ten minutes getting up steam. During that time he said he
worked on a section once--though not on this road--and was discharged
and a negro put in his place. He then decided not to work any more
for a living. He said he had been around towns and had heard people
say what they would do if they were “held up.” “What can a man do,” I
asked, “in the fix you have me in?” “Do as I tell you.” he replied.
When I got steam up he said, “Hurry up to State Line, and send a
message up and down the road, so they can get after us. Tell the
operator I say to hurry up about it. Tell the boss of those cars
(meaning the express cars) to put steps on them, or I will stop robbing
them. Don’t ring the bell or blow the whistle,” he concluded, “or I
will shoot into the engine.”
He told me, going down to the bridge, that he came here to rob this
train because there was a boast in the papers last spring that he could
not rob it, and he just wanted to show them what he could do.
The other two men, while we were talking at the engine, had gone out in
the bushes. While going to the engine with me he told number three to
put the messenger back in his car. When I got on the engine to start
he said, “Holler to those boys on the other side, and tell them to get
back from the train.” I thought he referred to his men, but saw none.
In coming down from the station he said he had men and tools to do the
job with.
* * * * *
The man described by Engineer Therrill as number one is easily
recognized as Rube Burrow, number two as Joe Jackson, and number three
as Rube Smith. The trestle at which the robbery was committed was
undergoing repair by a force of bridge men, and the train was in the
habit of stopping and then proceeding slowly across it. When the train
stopped, therefore, Messenger Dunning supposed it was on account of the
bad condition of the trestle, and gave little thought to the matter.
When hailed by the engineer, who had been instructed by the robbers to
call him to the door, the messenger found himself, on facing about,
covered by revolvers through the grated or iron barred door of the
car, the outer wooden door being open.
“Hold your hands down, and come to the door, or I will kill you,” said
Burrow.
A shot from the pistol of one of the robbers on the outside of the car
gave emphasis to the highwayman’s request, and when the grated door was
pushed back, as ordered by Rube Burrow, he got in the car and, handing
a sack to the messenger, said: “Put your money in there. Hurry up! I
have no time to lose.”
Securing $2,685 from the express car, Burrow then went to the mail car
and called for the registered mail. Mail Agent Bell had been collecting
the registered matter, preparatory to leaving the car with it, when
Rube entered and demanded it.
The registered mail, which contained $795, was taken, making the total
amount secured $3,480, or $1,160 each.
In stopping the train the passenger coaches had been left on the
trestle so as to prevent any one reaching the ground, twenty feet
below, and making an attack from that quarter. The shots fired soon
after the train was halted, two of which took effect in the steps of
the coach on which Conductor Scholes stood, silenced further inquiry,
and the work was completed without molestation.
When Burrow joined his comrades, after leaving the mail car, he seemed
anxious to have the train start. During the run from the station down
to the trestle he had forbidden the fireman to put any coal in the
fire-box, and, hence while the train was being robbed so much steam
was lost that it was ten minutes after the robbery was over before
sufficient steam was obtained to get under headway. Finally the train
resumed its onward course, and Burrow, sending a few parting shots of
humor after Engineer Therrill, joined his comrades who were anxiously
awaiting his coming in the brush a few yards distant.
The train dispatcher’s record of that day bore the simple explanation:
“Number five delayed thirty minutes at Buckatunna trestle, getting
robbed.”
The news of the robbery brought the officials of the Express and
Railroad Companies by special train to the scene. Possees were at once
organized and sent in pursuit. It was evident that the work was that of
Rube Burrow. “I will rob this train or kill every man on it” was the
identical expression used at Genoa and at Duck Hill. His disposition to
be humorous--in fact, every detail of the robbery gave evidence of his
identity as the leader.
The robbers were traced from the scene of their crime in an easterly
course. Blood-hounds were used in the pursuit, but the trail being cold
they were abandoned. The detectives, however, quietly took up the trail
and followed it towards Demopolis, Ala. At this point it was found
that Rube Smith separated from the other men about October 5th, and
went by rail into Lamar County. Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson continued
their journey afoot, and traveling by easy stages reached Lamar County
on the night of October 23d, impelled by some strange fancy to return
to the spot from which they had been so recently routed, and from which
they were soon to depart again.
[Illustration: DETECTIVE T. V. JACKSON.]
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CAPTURE OF RUBE SMITH AND JAMES M’CLUNG AT AMORY, MISS.--
M’CLUNG’S CONFESSION--A PLAN TO ROB THE TRAIN FALLS
THROUGH--A SAFE ROBBERY NIPPED IN THE BUD.
When the Buckatunna robbery of September 25, 1889, occurred, the fact
that three men participated in that deed proved that a third man had
joined Rube Burrow since his last robbery at Duck Hill, on December
15, 1888, and the identity of the third man puzzled the detectives
of the Express Company for some weeks. An accurate description,
however, of all three of the men had been obtained, and Detective
Thomas Jackson, after a visit into Lamar County a few weeks after the
robbery, became convinced that it was Rube Smith. On the eighth day
of October, succeeding the Buckatunna robbery, Rube Smith appeared
in Lamar County, exhibited a good deal of money, and was known to be
in hiding in the vicinity of his father’s home. Here he remained for
some weeks, narrowly escaping capture at the hands of Detective Thomas
Jackson several times, while the latter was daily securing additional
evidence of his complicity in the Buckatunna affair. Finally, in the
latter part of November, 1889, Jim McClung, an old acquaintance of Rube
Smith’s, left Itawamba County, Miss., to visit his relatives in Lamar
County, and while _en route_ thither fell in with Rube Smith near the
house of that worthy’s father. Rube exhibited quite a sum of money to
McClung, and invited him to accompany him to the Indian Territory,
which McClung agreed to do. This was the hiding place to which Smith
had gone soon after the Johnson robbery.
The two men left for the Indian Territory. Their destination was
Kavanaugh, and Smith unfolded to McClung, while _en route_, the whole
story of the Buckatunna train robbery and the part he played in it. He
described every detail and circumstance of the robbery, and McClung,
having a very retentive memory, was afterwards enabled to testify
about it so minutely that the jury in the Federal Court, before which
Smith had a mistrial in May, 1890, concluded that Jim McClung had
participated in that robbery. Such, however, was not the fact.
The section of the Indian Territory to which Smith and McClung went
was wild and sparsely settled, but no sooner had Smith appeared there
than he learned that the officers were after him for a violation of
the Federal law forbidding the importation and sale of intoxicating
liquors in the Indian Territory, while he was there in the early
spring. Smith therefore left within twenty-four hours after his
arrival, and returned to Lamar County, abandoning a project of robbing
the disbursing officer of an Indian agency near Kavanaugh, which he had
unfolded to McClung.
McClung soon tired of life in the Indian Territory, and, returning to
Alabama, found Smith in Lamar County. Here, on the 13th of December,
Rube Smith conceived the idea of robbing the Southern Express car at
Bigbee trestle, two miles north of Amory, Miss. The next night, soon
after dark, he set out with McClung from the home of Rube Smith’s
father for that purpose. How the plan fell through is best told by the
confession of Jim McClung, after the capture of Smith and himself in
the sitting-room of the depot at Amory, Miss.
At one o’clock A. M. Detective Thomas Jackson, assisted by local
officers Clay and Aikin, of Amory, made the capture. McClung made
but slight resistance, but Smith grappled with Jackson, despite the
fact that he was covered by the revolvers of both Clay and Jackson,
while Officer Aikin had McClung in charge, and a hand to hand struggle
ensued, in which Smith succeeded in dragging his captors into the
doorway of the station house, where he was finally overpowered and the
handcuffs placed upon him. The prisoners were taken to the Aberdeen,
Miss., jail, and on the 18th of December McClung made the following
confession to the express officials, which confirmed the information
already in their possession as to Smith’s complicity in the Buckatunna
robbery.
M’CLUNG’S CONFESSION.
My name is James McClung. I am twenty-two years of age. I have known
Rube Smith for five or six years, but have not seen much of him until
within the past few weeks. I returned from the Indian Nation three
weeks ago next Tuesday. I went to Henry Smith’s, in Itawamba County,
Miss., thirteen miles from Tupelo, and there found Rube Smith and Rube
Burrow. Rube Smith was sitting on his horse at the gate when I arrived,
about two hours after sun-up. About an hour after I arrived Rube Smith
told me that Rube Burrow was there. Smith invited me to go down to the
woods where Rube Burrow was. I went down a hollow on the west side, and
then went to the south side of the house, in an old field, where Rube
Burrow was lying on his coat. Burrow asked Smith what he had decided
upon, now that I had come. Burrow said he wanted to go into Alabama,
and to this we all agreed. Rube Smith and I went to Tupelo that night.
We ate two meals in Henry Smith’s house. Rube Smith carried Rube Burrow
his dinner and supper in the woods. Burrow promised to meet us at old
man Jim Smith’s, in Alabama, about five miles from Crews Station. Rube
Smith and I got off at Quincy, Miss., and walked over to Jim Smith’s.
We were afraid to get off at Crews. Burrow did not join us until last
Monday morning. Burrow made his appearance at the spring at Jim Smith’s
on Monday morning, the 7th of December. I went down to the spring. They
were talking of robbing a train at Bigbee trestle, two miles north of
Amory, Miss. We all decided on robbing the train on the K. C. M. & B.
Railroad on Friday night, the 16th of December. The plan was that Smith
and I should board the train at Sulligent and come to Amory. Burrow
was to walk and join us Thursday at Bigbee trestle. Smith and I got
off at Amory at 3 A. M. Thursday. We went into the woods and slept
about one-fourth of a mile from Amory. We went to the trestle about
9 A. M. Thursday. We found Burrow on the south side of the trestle
in the hollow. Smith told Burrow he had taken in the situation, and
did not think it would do to board the engine at Amory, because there
was a night watchman there, and it could not be done. Burrow said all
right--he did not care for a night watchman, but was willing to leave
it to Smith. It was then agreed to abandon the robbery of the train.
We agreed to go down to Winfield, Ala., and rob Jonathan Jones, a
merchant there. Smith proposed that he and I would go over to Hester’s
grocery, about three-quarters of a mile from Amory, and get some beer.
Burrow said he would remain until we got back. We were absent about
one hour, and when we came back, found Burrow there waiting for us.
All three of us then went to Amory. We stopped at Tubb’s spring, one
quarter of a mile out of Amory, and stayed there awhile. We went then
to Mrs. McDaniel’s, getting there about one hour before sunset. Rube
Burrow did not go in. We found no one in the house, but got some bread
and meat. Smith brought some out to Burrow. It was then nearly dark.
Rube Burrow proposed that he would go into the woods on the north side
of the track and sleep. Smith and I went to Mrs. McDaniel’s and stayed
all night. Next morning (Friday, the 13th) we met Rube Burrow in the
woods. We waited until Mrs. McDaniel went into the field, and then went
to the house and cooked some breakfast for Burrow, because he would not
go into the house, nor would he allow us to bring anything out while
Mrs. McDaniel was there. We remained about there until ten o’clock
A. M., then Smith and I went to John Marsh’s and got dinner. We gave
Burrow enough for dinner and breakfast.
We all got together at Amory Junction, about one mile out of Amory,
late in the evening. Burrow said there was no danger of any one knowing
him, and he was not afraid to come into Amory. So we all started in
about one hour before sunset. We came up the track until we got near
the depot. Burrow went over towards the round-house, among the side
tracks, where we went over later and joined him. We all went to a
well near Armstrong’s saloon and got some water. Rube Smith said he
wanted to buy a Winchester rifle. Burrow said, “Go ahead and get a
rifle; but be careful about fooling around, inquiring for guns.” Burrow
said to Smith that he wanted half a pint of whisky. Smith went into a
saloon and got it. Burrow said to Smith, “I will meet you and McClung
at the round-house.” Burrow had hidden the rifle between the Junction
and Amory. Rube Smith and I went into several stores inquiring for
Winchester rifles, but could find none. We went into Snow’s saloon, and
Rube Smith bought one gallon of whisky in a jug, also one-half pint. We
joined Burrow at the back of the round-house. Rube Burrow then ordered
us to meet him at Jim Smith’s, about three and one-half miles from
Crews Station. He said he would go ahead on foot, and would be there
between breakfast and dinner on Sunday, the 15th inst. We went to the
depot to take the train. Burrow told Smith and myself to be careful and
not get arrested. We were told to be sure and meet him, and were to rob
Jonathan Jones on Sunday night. Smith said he had stayed at Winfield,
Ala., where Jones did business, and he knew he had a good deal of
money. He told how he generally came out from supper and stayed at the
store all night, and said we could “hold him up” as he went into the
store and make him open his safe.
McClung gave a faithful account of the Buckatunna train robbery, as
detailed to him by Rube Smith, while they were on their way from
Alabama to the Indian Territory.
Time afterwards proved that McClung spoke the truth, as before told
in his confession at Aberdeen, except as to one particular--he was
mistaken as to the identity of Rube Burrow. Rube Smith had brought
with him from the Indian Territory a boon companion, whom McClung
had not met, and who somewhat resembled Burrow, but who did not care
to reveal his identity to McClung. As the latter had never seen Rube
Burrow, Smith easily passed his comrade off as the famous train robber.
It was afterwards proved beyond a doubt that Rube Burrow, on the day
of the capture of Smith and McClung, drove his ox-cart into the pines
near Flomaton, Ala., and camped there on that eventful night. McClung,
however, was perfectly honest in the belief that the pal to whom Smith
introduced him was no other than his cousin Rube. The man’s name is
well known to the express officials, but as he never committed, but
merely contemplated, a train robbery, he was allowed to go back into
the Indian Territory, and is now listed as a suspect only.
Rube Smith had conceived the idea of playing the role of leader in a
train robbery, but when the appointed hour came he lost confidence in
his ability for so bold an adventure, and abandoned the project for
a less daring deed. While awaiting the train, however, to take him to
the scene of his contemplated crime, he was arrested as described. He
was taken to Waynesboro, the county seat of Wayne County, Miss., and on
April 1, 1890, was convicted and sentenced to ten years, the extent of
the penalty, in the state-prison, for robbing the Southern Express car
at Buckatunna, Miss.
[Illustration: RUBE SMITH.]
CHAPTER XIV.
A FALSE ALARM--THE OX-CART TRIP TO FLORIDA--THE SEPARATION--RUBE
LOCATED AT BROXTON FERRY--HIS ESCAPE.
Rube and Joe, on their return to Lamar County, found their lair closely
beset by detectives. They found shelter, however, for some two weeks,
spending the nights in the barn-loft of Allen Burrow, one of the men
standing watch while the other slept.
On the 26th of October, 1889, the following telegram was received by an
official of the Southern Express Company from Sheriff Morris, of Blount
County, Alabama: “A posse in charge of one of my deputies attempted
to arrest two men, armed with pistols and Winchesters, fifteen miles
from Oneonta, Ala., yesterday. They killed two of the posse and wounded
five. Am positive the men were Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson.”
Repairing to Blount County, with blood-hounds and detectives, it was
soon ascertained by the express officials that the men were not Burrow
and Jackson, but two “moonshiners,” who had shot and wounded a revenue
officer at Blockton, Ala., about ten days prior to the date of the
attack by the sheriff’s posse.
Correspondents representing several prominent southern journals hied
themselves to Blount County to gather the details of another tragic
chapter in the history of Rube Burrow, and one enterprising scribe,
fresh from the field of carnage in Blount County, went into Lamar
County, bent on an interview with the famous bandit. This was the
handsome and gifted Barrett, of the Atlanta _Constitution_. Arriving
at Allen Burrow’s, in company with Jim Cash, the young journalist made
known the object of his visit.
The detectives having gone on a false trail to Blount County, Rube and
Joe were at that time in old man Burrow’s barn-loft, and when Allen
Burrow took Barrett’s horse thither he revealed to Rube the proposition
of the correspondent to interview him. Rube declined, saying he knew
the paper would publish a description of him, and he did not want that
done. Mr. Barrett, however, sent a very elaborate report of an alleged
interview to the _Constitution_, which, as a faithful historian, the
author is compelled to state never took place.
A crowning sensation in American journalism was reached when the
_Age-Herald_, of Birmingham, chartered a special train to enable it
to place upon the breakfast tables of Atlanta the daring exploits of
Rube in Blount County, and the Atlanta _Constitution_ responded by
chartering a like train to distribute at Birmingham an interview with
the famous bandit while he was supposed to sit under the very vine and
fig tree of the _Age-Herald_, but, as a matter of fact, was engaged
in combing the hayseed out of his hair after a night’s lodging in his
father’s barn.
As soon as the Blount County sensation had exploded, the detectives of
the Southern Express Company returned to Lamar County, and an incessant
watch was kept upon the houses of Allen Burrow, Jim Cash, and others.
Detectives disguised as peddlers of books, lightning rods, and nursery
stock, and others assuming the simple guise of tramps, sold their wares
in the one case, and begged bread in the other, from house to house,
all over Lamar County, and until Allen Burrow said one day to Rube:
“I believe there is a detective under every bush in the county; you had
better leave.”
Rube concluded his father was right, and on the twentieth day of
November, just about a month after their arrival, Rube and Joe left
Lamar County again. The two men went afoot to within a few miles of
Columbus, Miss., having resolved to walk into Florida and avoid the
necessity of hiding out in the brush all winter in Lamar County.
Joe Jackson was not as robust as Rube, and was not physically equal to
the task of walking several hundred miles. He proposed, after trudging
about eighteen miles, to return to Lamar County, purchase horses, and
make the trip on horseback. Rube dissented, fearing their trail would
be discovered and that pursuit would ensue, but suggested that they
return to the home of Jim Cash and purchase a yoke of oxen and a wagon
owned by him and make the trip in that way. Joe Jackson was averse
to this proposition at first, but Rube argued that as drivers of an
ox-cart they could assume the role of laborers and thus fully disguise
themselves. Returning, therefore, to Cash’s house, the oxen and cart
were purchased.
It was the custom of Allen Burrow and Cash to make frequent trips by
wagon across the country to Columbus, Miss., and so it was arranged
for Allen Burrow to take the two men, in a covered wagon drawn by
two horses, to within one mile of Columbus. Jim Cash, according to
arrangement, followed with the ox team, and in the outskirts of the
town, after dark, on the night of November 28th, the four men met.
Through the intervention of Cash an ample supply of provisions,
purchased from a store in Columbus, was stored away in the wagon,
and at ten o’clock at night the outlaws, in the garb of plodding
ox-drivers, resumed their journey southward. Cash and Burrow returned
home the next day, the former announcing that he had sold his ox team
in Columbus.
The detectives were not long in discovering, by the bearing and manner
of the friends of the outlaws, that they had left Lamar County.
Detective Jackson, knowing the habits and methods of Rube, was not
satisfied with Cash’s story that he had sold his oxen in Columbus.
Investigation developed nothing to corroborate the reported sale, and
Detective Jackson declared: “We must find that team, for it’s just like
Rube to give us the slip that way.”
Going to Columbus, the faithful detective, day by day, sought
diligently to discover the missing team, but it was not until about
January 15th that his labors were rewarded in finding the trail near
Carrollton, in Pickens County, Miss., forty miles south of Columbus.
The detective was on foot. The outlaws were then forty-five days ahead
of him, and were evidently heading for southern Alabama or Florida.
Returning and reporting the discovery, it was deemed best to go by
rail to Wilson’s Station, on the Louisville and Nashville Railway, and
thence to Gainestown, a landing on the Alabama River, about forty miles
distant, where it was thought the men would cross. The conclusion had
been wisely made. The cunning detective had shrewdly divined the very
spot at which the robbers would cross the river.
Arriving at Gainestown January 24th, Jackson found that the ox-cart, in
charge of two men, had crossed the river on the night of December 11th.
Encouraged by this discovery the officer pursued the trail on through
Escambia County, and found that on the evening of December 14th the two
men had driven into Flomaton, Ala., a small station on the Louisville
and Nashville Railway, forty miles north of Pensacola. Here it was
discovered that the men had camped about half a mile from the station,
and had made inquiries concerning a logging camp in Santa Rosa County,
Florida.
Leaving Flomaton on the morning of January 29th, Detective Jackson
went to McCurdy’s ferry, on the Escambia River, two miles south, and
there ascertained that a man calling himself Ward had crossed the
ferry with an ox team on the morning of December 15th, and that he was
alone. Pursuing the trail south some twenty miles, Milton, Florida, was
reached. Here it was found that one man had crossed Blackwater with an
ox team at that point on the night of December 17th. The belief that
Joe Jackson had separated from Rube at Flomaton was confirmed, for the
man in charge of the ox team was, beyond question, Rube Burrow.
Leaving Milton, the detective went to Broxton’s ferry, on Yellow River,
about ten miles south. Arriving at the ferry he was confronted by a
stream about thirty yards wide, whose tortuous length stretched itself
through a jungle of cane and cypress which seemed to defy his further
progress. There was no boat in sight, and the unbroken wild-wood on the
opposite bank gave no sign of a mooring. The screech of an owl from
his perch in the dark cover of the jungle broke the stillness that
prevailed, and awakened the detective from his lonely reverie.
Jackson learned from a man, who came stalking through the brush at
this juncture, that the opposite bank was that of an island, and in
order to reach the south side of the river the point of the island must
be turned by rowing about half a mile down stream and then stemming
the current for a like distance along the opposite shore. While the
distance across the island from shore to shore was only about five
hundred yards, the view was wholly obscured by the canebrake that
covered it.
By shrewd questioning, Jackson found that Rube, under the name of Ward,
was engaged in hauling feed from the landing on the opposite shore to
Allen’s log camp, about eighteen miles away, and at that very hour
he was loading for his return trip on the south bank of the river.
Broxton, the ferryman, had, unfortunately, gone to Milton with the only
boat used at the ferry, and it was impossible to cross the river that
day.
It was ascertained that Rube’s practice was to leave the log camp
about seven o’clock in the morning, reach the ferry about two in the
afternoon, and after loading repair to the house of Broxton, the
ferryman, where he would spend the night, and making an early start
on the succeeding day arrive at the camp in the afternoon. It had,
therefore, been his practice to reach the ferry landing on Yellow River
every alternate day.
Jackson, being unable to cross the river, returned to Milton on
February 4th, and sent the following telegram to an official of the
Southern Express Company: “I expect to secure title to tract number
one, about ten miles south of here, Wednesday, February 6th. The papers
are all in good shape.”
Rube Burrow had always been designated in correspondence between the
officers and detectives as number one, and the telegram therefore meant
that Jackson had located his man, that his plans were in good shape,
and the capture would be made at the hour and place designated.
At four o’clock on the morning of February 6th Jackson was joined at
Milton by the express officials, to whom the details of the situation
were given. At an early hour the start for Broxton’s ferry was made in
a hack, Jackson having selected four reliable men from Milton to assist
him. The party reached the ferry landing on the north bank of the
river about eleven o’clock A. M., and after some difficulty a boat was
secured and a landing on the south shore was effected.
It had been determined at first to continue the journey beyond the
river and capture Rube in the road, but on reaching the south landing
the surroundings seemed so advantageous that it was decided to await
his arrival at the ferry. The roadway, after leaving the south bank of
the river a few miles, wends its course through a sparsely timbered
pine forest. It is very straight, and persons traversing it from
opposite directions could see each other for miles. It was therefore
feared that Rube, ever on the alert, might take the alarm at sight of
the posse. On the contrary, at the ferry all seemed propitious. There
was moored the boat which contained the camp supplies to be loaded
into Rube’s cart with his own hands. It seemed a very trap, baited
and set in the certain pathway of some beast whose lair had just been
discovered, and here it was agreed to quietly await the hour of his
coming. The exit from the landing where the boat was moored was a
narrow corduroy road that debouched from the water’s edge, through
overhanging boughs and vines, for some three hundred yards, to the foot
of a hill, and, curving to the south, shut out all further view from
the river. On either side of the road, approaching the landing, were
the fallen trunks of huge cypress trees, which afforded a splendid
cover for the posse.
At the hour of noon, with the ferryman sitting not thirty paces
distant, so as to watch the road and give the signal when the cart
should appear in sight, the posse went into ambush and anxiously
awaited Rube’s arrival. He had never been later than two o’clock in
reaching the ferry. It had been arranged that upon his arrival, and
immediately upon his halting his team, all six of the posse would
cover him with their breech-loading shotguns, and Detective Jackson
should order the bandit to surrender; and if he failed to do so, the
discharge of Jackson’s gun would be a signal for the rest of the posse
to fire.
Every alternate day for five weeks Rube had arrived at this spot
between two and three o’clock P. M. The presence of the posse at the
ferry was known to no one save the ferryman, and he was kept under
careful surveillance. The capture of the outlaw seemed absolutely
certain.
As the silent hours rolled by the detectives watched with bated breath
for the signal from the ferryman. In the awful stillness that prevailed
the ticking of the watches that marked the passing hours could be
heard. Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock came, and yet the
crack of the ox-driver’s whip, the longed-for music of the “gee-whoa,”
which, on Rube’s coming, were wont to disturb the solitude of this
wild retreat, were heard not. Finally, at five o clock, after another
hour of anxious waiting had passed, a colored laborer in the log camp
from which Rube was expected, appeared. He was questioned as to the
whereabouts of Ward, the name assumed by Burrow, and answered that one
of his oxen was sick; that he had not started at eleven o’clock, and
would probably not come until next day. This was a sore disappointment.
The camp could not be reached until long after dark. The outlaw
might start at any hour, and the posse might miss him in some of the
many by-roads that intervened the long distance. It was concluded,
therefore, to remain on watch at the ferry, hoping that he might still
arrive before night.
With the slowly sinking sun sank the hopes of the anxious officers, who
felt that the cover of night would bring some untoward event to mar the
plans which had been arranged for the capture. Darkness came, but the
silent watch was continued. Broxton, the ferryman, lived about one mile
from the ferry, and immediately on the road along which Rube had to
travel. It was now quite certain if Rube should arrive he would spend
the night at Broxton’s and reach the ferry next morning. Ascertaining
that there was a vacant house a few hundred yards beyond the house of
the ferryman, and only a few feet from the road, it was determined best
to remove the posse to this building and watch there during the night.
About seven o’clock the posse started from the river, giving orders to
the driver of the hack not to follow until time had been allowed the
advance guard to reach the ferryman’s house. This order was, however,
disobeyed, and just as the detectives approached the house, and when
only about three hundred yards distant, Rube drove up to the gate and
inquired of Mrs. Broxton the whereabouts of her husband.
The woman answered: “He has been at the river all day with a party of
hunters.”
Rube, ever on the _qui vive_, gathered his Marlin rifle from his cart,
saying: “I’ll go down and see Mr. Broxton.”
Walking towards the ferry about fifty yards he heard strange voices,
saw the hack, and intuitively knew that he himself was the game the
hunters were after. Like a deer he bounded into the forest and was lost
to his pursuers.
A guard was placed over the team which Rube had left as a trophy to his
would-be captors, in the hope that the owner would return to confirm
his doubts, if he had any, but Rube took the safe side, ran no risk,
and did not return.
Rube set out at once for the log camp, arriving there about midnight.
Arousing the cook, he bade him prepare supper, which he ate with
great relish, while he recounted a story of thrilling adventure with
highwaymen, in which he had luckily escaped with his life. Supplying
himself with a goodly store of provisions from the camp’s larder, the
outlaw about three o’clock A. M. said good-bye to his comrades, and
went forth into the solitude of the forest, consoling himself with the
reflection that he had again outwitted the detectives.
There are those who would doubtless have managed the affair at
Broxton’s Ferry, on the eventful evening of February 6th, differently,
perhaps successfully, but fortunately for Rube they were not present.
The ox team was taken to Milton and sold for the sum of $80.
Detective Jackson, undaunted by the luckless result of the chase,
equipped himself for a tour through the swamps of Santa Rosa, and,
leaving him in pursuit, the rest of the party turned their faces
homeward.
As an example of the unparalleled audacity of the noted train robber
it may here be recorded that a few weeks afterward he endeavored to
recover the value of the oxen and cart by executing a bill of sale
therefor to one Charles Wells. The latter demanded the property, but
it is needless to say he did not succeed in obtaining it. The express
officials notified the would-be purchaser that the outfit had been
sold, and that the title of the party to whom sold would be defended
against any and all claimants.
CHAPTER XV.
CAPTURE OF JOE JACKSON.
During the summer of 1890, after having been routed from his haunts on
Yellow River on February 6th, it was known that Rube Burrow was in the
swamps of Florida, near East Bay, and that Joe Jackson was not with
him. It was definitely ascertained that they had separated at Flomaton,
Ala., on the 14th of December, 1889, when Rube drove his ox-cart into
Santa Rosa County, Florida. It was known that the two men had made an
agreement to meet in Baldwin County, Ala., on the 20th of February,
1890. The information as to this proposed meeting was reliable. It was
evidently their intention to rob a train at Dyer’s Creek, a point about
thirty miles north of Mobile. The routing of Rube, however, from his
hiding place in Florida interfered with this project.
Joe Jackson was promptly on hand at the rendezvous, the exact locality
of which was not then definitely known to the detectives. He had seen
in the _Courier-Journal_ a notice of the pursuit of Rube Burrow in
Florida, and was very cautious in going to the place agreed upon. He
however made his appearance at Dyer’s. He waited about there only one
day, and not finding Rube, he left, especially as he casually heard
that the detectives were looking for Rube Burrow in that country.
Traveling from place to place until May, 1890, and restless over the
long separation from Rube, Jackson went back into Lamar County, as it
was expected he would. His presence in that locality was soon known
to Detective Jackson, but there were so many hiding places among the
Burrow kinsfolk that it was difficult to locate him. It was expected
daily that Rube would join him, but not so. Rube still confined himself
to Florida.
Detective Jackson knowing that Joe was in Lamar County, determined to
capture him. Taking a trusty man with him he went into Lamar County,
traveling by night and afoot, and camped in the woods a few hundred
yards from the home of Allen Burrow. His night vigils were soon
rewarded by observing suspicious movements, and an interchange of
visits between old man Allen Burrow and Jim Cash. They were evidently
preparing for a trip.
About dark on the night of the 15th of July Jim Cash and Joe Jackson
rode out from the home of Allen Burrow in the direction of Fernbank, on
the Georgia Pacific Road. The detectives were close upon their trail,
and as it was evident that Jackson was _en route_ to take a train on
the Georgia Pacific Road it was not deemed safe to attempt the capture
at night on the open roadway.
Detective Jackson covered all trains east and west of Fernbank
with careful men, and he himself boarded the train at Kennedy, a
few miles east of Fernbank, with ex-Sheriff Pennington and Sheriff
Metcalf, of Lamar County. At Fernbank Joe Jackson boarded the train.
He deliberately walked into the ladies’ car and took a seat. The
detectives were in the smoking car ahead, but kept the robber under
close surveillance.
On arriving at the first station Detective Jackson got out and went
to the rear of the ladies’ car. Entering, he took a seat, unobserved,
immediately behind Joe Jackson, and sat there until the train reached
Columbus, Miss. When the train stopped, and Joe stepped out of the
coach, he was covered by the pistols of the detectives and was arrested
without a shot being fired. He had left his pistols at Allen Burrow’s,
and, as afterwards learned, was _en route_ to Pleasant Hill, La., the
home of his uncle, J. T. Harrell, having become tired of waiting for
Rube Burrow’s arrival.
The prisoner was taken to Memphis, Tenn., where, upon being confronted
with the overwhelming evidence against him, he made the confession
recorded in the next chapter.
CHAPTER XVI.
CONFESSION OF LEONARD CALVERT BROCK, ALIAS JOE JACKSON, MADE AT
MEMPHIS, TENN., JULY 19, 1890, AND CORRECTED AND AMENDED AT
JACKSON, MISS., OCTOBER 16, 1890.
Leonard Calvert Brock is my full name. I was born in Coffee County,
Ala., July 13, 1860. My father’s name is Joseph E. Brock, and he was
born near Raleigh, N. C. He is a physician by profession. He moved from
there to Georgia, and then to Alabama. My mother’s name was Sallie
F. Harrell, and she was born in Georgia. My parents were married in
Georgia before coming to Alabama. I have one brother, whose name is
John Brock. He was born in 1863, and now lives on a farm in Coffee
County, Ala. I have a married sister, who was born in 1852, Rebecca
Katherine Brock. She married William Russell, and lives in Coffee
County. The post-office address of all the above named parties is Elba,
Ala.
I was never married. Was raised on a farm, and my schooling was
limited. I went to school to a good teacher about eight months.
Remained on a farm in Coffee County, Ala., until 1886, when I went to
Texas, on account of a cutting scrape, the particulars of which are as
follows: I had a negro working for me whose name was Louis Chapman.
We had some hot words about a business matter, and I stabbed him very
severely. I was also accused of killing a negro in Coffee County about
the same time, and on account of these troubles I left home. I am
innocent of the murder of the negro.
I went to Texas via the Southern Pacific route, and stopped at San
Antonio, where I went to work for one Robert Daniels. Daniels was
engaged in buying horses and driving them to northern Texas. I went
to Dallas from San Antonio, and worked awhile in a lumber yard. I
also worked a month for a man named Brown. Then I went to Sherman and
stayed a few days, but was unable to get work. I went from there to
Gainesville, and from there to the Indian Territory, where I worked for
a man named John Pair.
I then went back to Cook County, Texas, in the southwest part of the
county. There I first saw Rube Burrow, in company with a man whom he
called “Bill.” This was in the spring of 1886. Burrow employed me to
help get up cattle. We went down into Young County, and from there to
Wise County. I did not visit Burrow’s house at any time. We drove some
cattle to Fort Worth and sold them. He sold about thirty or forty head.
Then he quit the cattle business and discharged me.
I then went to Texarkana and worked at a saw mill for a few days. I
then went to Shreveport and got work at a sawmill about one hundred
miles below Shreveport. I went from there to New Orleans, and from
there to Mobile, and worked a few days in a livery stable for a man
named Metzger. I went from there, in the fall of 1887, to Pensacola,
and got work driving a team. From there I went to Milton, and drove
a team for a man named Collins for some time, and went from there to
Florida and remained there, working part of the time. I was at several
stations on the Pensacola and Atlantic Road.
In the latter part of 1887 I went from there to Texas. First I stopped
at Sherman, and worked there for a few days. I stayed there until
February, 1888. There I got a letter from Burrow. He addressed me
as Lewis Waldrip. I was then going by that name. He said he was in
trouble, but did not say what it was, and asked me to come to him. The
letter was written from Vernon. I replied to the letter, addressing it
to James Cash, and told him I was undecided whether to come or not. I
received another letter from him, also from Vernon, Ala.
About the first of March, 1888, I went to Alabama. I went via Memphis,
and got off the train at Sulligent, and went to old man Burrow’s by
way of Vernon. I found Burrow at Cash’s house. He then told me that
detectives were searching for him, and told me about his arrest and
escape at Montgomery. He stated they had gotten off the train at
Montgomery and started up the street, when policemen attempted to
arrest them. He escaped, after shooting one of them, but his brother
was captured. He was pursued by a party and surrounded in a negro
cabin, where he had gone to get some coffee. He ran out of the house to
the timber and escaped unhurt, although fired upon. He sat down in the
bushes, and although he had no cartridges he pretended to be loading
his pistol, and they were afraid to attack him. He went from there back
to Lamar County, Ala.
[Illustration: L. C. BROCK, _alias_ JOE JACKSON.]
After I arrived in Lamar County, in March, 1888, we stayed there about
a week, and then went south to Monroe County, crossing the Georgia
Pacific Road at Columbus, Miss. We went into Columbus, Miss.; from
there to Artesia, Miss., and thence to Meridian. We took a boat on
the Tombigbee River and went to Coffeeville, Ala., and then walked to
Baldwin County, Ala. We worked in Dunnaway’s log camp there, and it was
here we met John Barnes. I drove a log team for Dunnaway, and Burrow
sawed logs with Barnes. We remained there three weeks. Dunnaway then
moved his teams to a point on the L. & N. Road, near Perdido Station. I
carried a team there for him, and he then discharged me and Burrow, and
we sawed logs at another camp for a few days. We then left, and crossed
the Alabama River near Fort Claiborne. We crossed the Tombigbee
River at the station where the railroad crosses the river. Workmen
were engaged in painting the bridge, and asked us not to cross on the
bridge, and we went down and crossed at the ferry. We then went north
until we got into Mississippi, and went via Buckatunna to Ellisville.
Then we went to Forrest, Miss. We bought our horses in Smith County,
Miss. I traded my horse at Dixon, Miss., giving $15 to boot. The horse
cost $90. Burrow paid $85 for his horse. From Dixon we went to Oxford,
via Houston, Miss. We went through Oxford on horseback. We went on
to Berryhill’s, Rube Burrow’s brother-in-law, arriving there about
eleven o’clock A. M. Berryhill was absent, but returned that evening.
We remained there two days. Left there in the afternoon, and went
east to Okolona. Went thence to Cotton Gin, Miss., and from there to
Vernon, Ala., stopping at Cash’s house. We got to Lamar County in the
middle of May. Cash kept my horse and Burrow took his to his father’s.
We remained there, being most of the time near Cash’s house, until
the early part of August, when Reuben Burrow, having learned that his
brother Jim, who was in the penitentiary at Little Rock, Ark., for safe
keeping, would be taken to Texarkana about the fifth of September for
trial, determined to go to his rescue. We talked the matter over, and
resolved to rescue him from the guards, even if we had to kill them to
do so. I do not recollect what date it was, but we saddled our horses,
one at John Burrow’s and one at Jim Cash’s, on a dark night in the
early part of August, and started on the Arkansas trip. We crossed the
Tombigbee River at Cotton Gin, Miss., and came through Okolona, Miss.,
through Oxford, Miss., through Sardis, Miss., and took a westerly
course to Helena, Ark., where we crossed the Mississippi River. Went
from Helena to Pine Bluff, crossing the White River at St. Charles.
Crossed the Arkansas River nine miles south of Pine Bluff; then went to
Malvern; then to Donaldson, fifteen miles south of Malvern, where we
expected to get Jim Burrow from the train. Then we passed Arkadelphia,
remaining there one night, and went down to Curtis, fifteen miles
south of Arkadelphia. There we searched two trains for Jim Burrow, but
failed to find him. We then came back through Arkadelphia to Donaldson.
There we searched two or three trains. Then we went up to Malvern, and
boarded two or three trains there. While at Curtis, Ark., we learned
that there was a train which would not stop at that place, but would
stop at Arkadelphia, and Rube said he would go back to Arkadelphia. We
made the trip, riding hard, but not in time to get on the train. Just
as we rode into the town the train pulled out.
Then we lost all hope of getting Jim Burrow, and came on to Pine Bluff,
crossing the Arkansas River nine miles south of Pine Bluff, and came
on back through the country to DeWitt, and crossed the White River at
a point twelve or fifteen miles north of St. Charles, Ark., and went on
back to Helena, crossing the Mississippi River at Helena. Stayed all
night at a little town on the Mississippi River, fifteen miles above
Helena, on the east side of the river. Next day we came out through
the bottom, wading our horses through mud knee deep for fifteen miles.
Stayed all night two miles from the ferry, and there met Fletcher
Stephens, who wanted to hire hands to pick cotton. Burrow proposed that
we go to work picking cotton for Stephens. Stephens agreed, and gave
us fifty cents per hundred and our board. This was about the first
of October, 1888. Burrow was a good cotton picker, but I was not. We
picked cotton until about December first, and Stephens paid us $50.
We then went from there to Sardis. Remained all night at Sardis, and
crossed the Tallahatchie and went south to Berryhill’s, where we stayed
one day. Went from there to Water Valley, Miss., and stayed there all
night. Put our horses up at a stable there. Had decided at this time to
rob a train, but no place or time had been set. We decided on robbing a
train before we left Berryhill’s.
While looking at some horses at the livery stable at Water Valley,
Burrow and I noticed a policeman eyeing us closely. This made us rather
uneasy, and when the policeman went from the stable to the hotel where
we were stopping, Burrow followed him and went to the hotel and got
his saddle-bags, which he had left there. We then saddled our horses
and left.
We stayed at a widow’s house that night, and as it was raining next
day we stopped at ten o’clock at a house and remained there until next
morning. We then went south, and took dinner next day ten or twelve
miles from Duck Hill, Miss. Arrived at Duck Hill soon after dark on the
night of December 15, 1889. I went into a store and bought two boxes
of sardines; went back, and we waited a short while for the train. The
horses were hitched out about half a mile or so from town, and east of
the track.
When the train pulled into the station we were in plain sight. There
was nobody out, as it was a bad night. We were there close by the
station. We got on the engine just as it was ready to pull out, both
on the same side, and each one of us had a pistol. I did not point my
pistol directly at either engineer or fireman, but we covered them and
ordered them to run out a certain distance, about eight hundred yards
from the station, and stop. The engineer was in the act of stopping
the train when we got on the engine, but we made him pull out. When
he stopped the train I stepped on the ground first. Just as I stepped
on the ground I fired off my pistol in the air, and about that time
Burrow, the engineer and the fireman got out, and we all walked back to
the express car. About the time I fired my pistol I noticed the door
of the express car was open. Burrow went in the express car. I remained
on the ground.
Pretty soon I saw a man walking towards me from the passenger coaches,
and told him to go back. I thought he was going to shoot me, and I
asked the engineer to tell him to go back, and the engineer did so. The
engineer asked me at the same time not to shoot him--that the man had
nothing to shoot me with--and I did not shoot him. The man did not turn
back, and the negro fireman told him to turn back, and he then did so.
In a few minutes some one down by the passenger coach spoke, and at
the same time commenced shooting at us. The engineer ran, I don’t know
where to, and as they commenced shooting (I think they had fired about
two shots) I commenced firing. I kept advancing from the train, in
order to dodge their shots. There was somebody else down in one of the
coaches who shot out several times--probably four or five times.
After the shooting was over I walked back to the side of the express
car and stood there until Burrow came out. I did not know there was
anybody shot. I fired one shot when I stepped off the engine, and fired
four shots while standing at the express car. I could see the man I was
shooting at, but very indistinctly. Did not hear him cry out when shot.
I remained by the car, after the shooting, until Burrow got out. The
negro fireman said to me, “Don’t shoot me.” I said I was not going to
shoot him.
I think I saw Burrow in the car door while the shooting was going on
outside. We were all shooting rapidly, and I could not tell much about
Burrow’s shooting. When we left the car we loaded our pistols. I put in
five cartridges, and he put three, he said, in his.
We then made our way back to our horses, got on them and rode the
balance of the night. It was raining all the time, and we waded the
creek three times, crossing bends, to get to our horses. It began to
rain very hard after we mounted our horses.
We rode at least forty miles by daylight. That day we camped in the
woods, about forty miles from the scene of the robbery. Burrow got
some corn for the horses. We were very wet. We built a fire to dry our
clothes, and then ate something about the middle of the day. We dried
the money and counted it. There was $1500 in greenbacks and $365 in
silver. We divided it half and half. This was on Sunday. That evening
we started out about sundown, and crossed the Illinois Central Road at
Weirs Station. Went through the town, and took the Philadelphia road
and rode all night, making about fifty miles; rode on next day until
about eleven o’clock. Stopped at a house and got dinner, and stayed
there about three hours. On Monday night we did not ride very far.
Built a fire that night. Tuesday morning there was a heavy frost.
We left the Philadelphia road next morning, coming to Pearl River
before we got to Philadelphia. We thought we might be waylaid at the
bridge by detectives and shot, and when we got within two hundred
yards of the bridge over Pearl River, we turned through the swamps and
swam the river about eight o’clock Tuesday morning, five miles from
Philadelphia. We rode through the timber until we struck a road leading
north from Philadelphia to Lewisville. Did not travel the road. Laid up
that day in the woods.
Started about sundown, and just after dark stopped at a negro’s house
to buy corn for our horses, but found no one at the house. There was a
rail pen full of corn, and we could have taken what we wanted, but we
did not do it. Stealing corn was out of our line of business. Riding
on, we saw a light, and going up to it, we found an old colored woman
in the house. From her we bought twenty-five ears of corn and some
provisions, paying her one dollar therefor. Fed our horses there, and
went through Lewisville on Tuesday night after the robbery, and took
the road towards Macon, on the M. & O. Road. Rode fifty miles that
night.
Next day we lay up until ten o’clock, stopping at daylight. Then went
on towards Macon, and turned to the left and crossed the M. & O. Road
at Brooksville, Miss. We inquired here for the road to Columbus. Went
via Deerbrook to Columbus, riding slowly, and crossed the Tombigbee
River just before day at Columbus. Went out from Columbus about six
miles and stayed there that day.
A lightning rod man who lived at Aberdeen, Miss., came out to the house
where we were stopping. We remained there until after dark. Took the
road at dark and traveled toward Vernon, Ala. Arrived at Vernon about
midnight on Thursday night after the robbery, and went to Jim Cash’s
house about twelve o’clock. Got something to eat and fed our horses,
and left word for him to come up next morning and get our horses. We
went five miles above there to a point in the woods.
Don’t remember that we asked Cash anything about the robbery. First saw
an account of it in the Memphis _Appeal_, which came in a day or two
after we got there. John Burrow came to us next morning. We did not say
anything to him about the robbery. He brought us something to eat. Told
us where we could take our horses and sell them. We turned over the
horses to John Burrow that morning, and he took them off to sell them,
but did not succeed in selling the horses then. Mr. Cash afterwards
sold the bay horse. A man there kept the sorrel horse.
We remained around there, staying first in one house and then in
another--most of the time at Cash’s house and John Burrow’s, but not
much at old man Burrow’s. I stayed in the woods in day-time and in the
house at night.
Stayed there until some time in July, 1889, having arrived there from
the Duck Hill robbery just before Christmas. Sometime in the spring
Burrow decided to send for a wig, and sent for it, to be addressed to
W. W. Cain. I don’t recollect at what post-office. After a long time he
heard that some mail had come for W. W. Cain, at Jewell post-office.
Mr. Cash said that one day he asked the postmaster, Mr. Graves, if
there was any mail there. Graves said there was a circular or paper of
some kind there for Cain, and he would bring it or send it down, which
he did a few days after.
They got word in some manner that a wig had come, and Burrow also got
word that Graves said he was going to arrest the man that came after
it, and see what business he had with it. Heard that Graves had taken
it out of the wrapper and was showing it to people, and remarked to
several that he was going to take in the man that came for it, and find
what business he had with it. Burrow asked me to go for it, but I did
not want to go. I told him that to go after it, if Graves was going to
do a thing of that kind, would stir up a big fuss. Burrow at last said
he was going to have it, and that Graves would not arrest him, and he
went after it.
He started one morning before day, and, on arriving, went in the house
from a door on the east side; saw Mr. Graves standing behind a counter
near the post-office department, and a lady standing behind the same
counter near the other end of the house. As he stepped in he spoke to
them politely, and asked Graves if there was any mail there for W. W.
Cain. Graves made no reply, but walked slowly from the post-office
department towards a double-barrelled shotgun, which Burrow said he saw
sitting behind the counter, and which was the gun that Graves intended
to arrest the man with. He asked him a second time if there was any
mail there for W. W. Cain, and Graves said “Yes,” but still advanced
towards the gun. Burrow told him to get the mail, and he made no effort
to go to get it, and Burrow then pulled his pistol and shot him,
saying, “Get it for me, or I will shoot you again.” About that time
Graves began to fall, and the lady said, “Don’t shoot him any more; I
will get the mail for you.” She then went and found part of the mail,
and Burrow asked her if there was any more. She told him she thought
there was, and found it and gave it to him, and he then left, going out
the same door he came in.
There was a negro in the house who ran out just as Burrow pulled his
pistol, and while he was standing there he saw the negro’s head around
the door, but he ran off again.
Burrow got back at ten o’clock that night to where I was staying, at
Jim Cash’s house. He waked me and told me that he had to shoot that man
to get his mail. Before Burrow went to the post-office I advised him
not to go for the mail, as he had heard that Graves intended to arrest
the man. I said, “You might shoot him, and it would cause a great deal
of trouble.” But he said he was going to have it, and that it was his
and he had paid for it.
After he came to me that night and told me that he had shot him, we
then went out and laid in the woods. We left without seeing Cash, and
went over about a mile north of Cash’s in the hills, and remained
there until that evening about three or four o’clock, when Mr. Cash
and John Burrow came from Sulligent. We heard their wagon coming, and
got near the road, where we saw them. Cash told us where to go, and he
would bring us something to eat next morning. Cash only remained a few
minutes; said he had heard Graves was killed. Burrow said nothing about
it.
That night we went to a place which was over in another direction,
about half a mile from Cash’s. He brought us something to eat, and
we remained there one or two days. We then went nearer to Cash’s
house, and remained in the bushes for a few days. Then we went to John
Burrow’s and stayed in the bushes, probably two or three days, when
the men came from Aberdeen. The night they came was a wet and rainy
night, and we went in John Burrow’s house to sleep. Next morning, just
before day, I went out of the house and discovered three men lying on
the ground. I got within four or five feet of them. I did not go back
in the house, but went back in the bushes where we had been staying.
Burrow waited until daylight, and then came out where I was.
The men who had been scattered around the house were gone. I told
Burrow I walked on somebody out there. He said he reckoned not, but
I insisted that I did, and when Mrs. Burrow brought us our breakfast
we told her about it. She went out and found signs. She walked on the
other side of the house, in the lane where there was sand, and she said
the sand was all packed with tracks.
We remained there until we heard the men coming back to Burrow’s, and
they were right at his house before we got up to walk off. We then
walked around there through the bushes, about three hundred yards from
John Burrow’s house, and remained through the day. When night came we
walked over in another direction about a mile from John Burrow’s and
half a mile from Cash’s.
The detectives had Jim Cash, John Burrow and old man Allen Burrow in
jail. Rube did not say much about it, only that they were holding them,
thinking it would enable them to get us, and that they would turn them
out in a few days.
We then depended on the women to bring us food. John Burrow, Jim Cash
and old man Burrow were turned out of jail in two or three days, and
we then continued around in the bushes until about the latter part of
August, Jim Cash bringing us food.
About this time old Mrs. Burrow, Allen Burrow’s wife, went up a few
miles north to Crews to see her sister. She got word that Rube Smith
wanted to see Rube Burrow. She came back and told Rube Burrow about
it, and he decided that he would about as soon see him as not; at the
same time he thought there might be some trick in it, but in a day or
two he got his sister to go and tell Rube Smith where to meet him. The
place agreed on was at the lower corner of the graveyard at Fellowship
Church. We went there early on the night we were to meet him. We did
not go to the lower corner of the graveyard, but went down in the
bushes a piece further. I went to sleep after being there awhile, and
Burrow crawled up near the corner to see who would come. He got tired
waiting, and came back to where I was and woke me, and I had been
awake a few minutes when we heard some one walking. He crawled back as
quickly as he could near the lower corner of the graveyard, where we
heard the man walking, and got over inside. He saw there was only one
man, and he spoke to him. They stayed there a few minutes; I did not
hear the conversation; then he brought him up and introduced him to
me as his friend, without giving any name, and did not call my name.
Burrow told me he had not seen Smith since he was a little boy. I knew
Smith was the man we were going to meet, because Rube Burrow had sent
his sister after him. We stayed there a few minutes, and then we all
three went back to where Burrow and I had been, in the woods half a
mile from Cash’s.
We remained there next day, and next night we went nearer Smith’s
house. We did not go in sight of the house. It was about ten or twelve
miles from Cash’s. We remained there two days. Smith went after food
for us, but I do not know where he got it. We then went back near
Cash’s again. Remained there one or two days, when we started south,
traveling down the Tombigbee River. We did not start for any certain
point when we started. Burrow told Smith, just as he told me, how a
train could be robbed. Smith agreed to go; said he had no money, and
needed some.
We then traveled south to Ellisville, Miss., on the Northeastern Road.
It was concluded before we got to Ellisville that we would rob a train
on the Northeastern Road, but Rube decided that there was not a great
deal of money on that road, and we would go back over to Buckatunna
and rob a train there. I should have said that our route to Ellisville
was via Buckatunna, Miss. After getting to Ellisville we decided not
to rob the Northeastern train, and decided to go back to Buckatunna.
We traveled on the road until we got within two or three miles of
Buckatunna. Waited over one day in a little out-house. We went out half
a mile from the house and got some bread cooked at a white man’s house.
I went to get the bread cooked, and made the bargain for it, and Smith
went after the bread when it was cooked.
On the evening previous to the robbery I went to Buckatunna and got a
piece of meat and went back to the camp. Saw a negro in the out-house
where we were staying, but did not talk to him. When dark came on we
left the house and went through Buckatunna; don’t remember how far
we went below Buckatunna, but we went to where the trestle was. We
remained there that night until the north-bound train passed. Then
Burrow and Smith went to Buckatunna. Burrow asked which one was going
with him. I do not remember just what was said, but he told Smith to go
with him, and I remained there until they came down with the train. The
train stopped right where I was sitting, at the end of the cross-tie.
I then said to Burrow, “You had better bring out the pick with you.”
Burrow had told me how they had picked the door open when the express
messenger refused to open it, and they did that rather than fire the
express car. They brought the pick out, when Smith, the fireman and
engineer got off the engine. Burrow remained on the engine two or
three minutes, or got off on the other side, I don’t know which. They
then came back to the express car. Burrow took a position in front of
the door of the express car and told the express messenger to open
the door; that if he attempted to move away without opening it he
would shoot him. It was a barred door that Burrow wanted opened. The
messenger opened the door and Burrow went in. What words were passed as
he was going in, or after he was in, I do not know. I remained there
with the fireman and engineer. Smith walked back towards the passenger
coach a few steps. The conductor, or some one, came to the door of the
passenger coach and asked what we were doing--I suppose two or three
times. I fired off my pistol in the air. Some one--I suppose it was
Smith--fired his pistol off also. Burrow got through in the express car
and came out. He told the engineer to pull the train up until the mail
car was off the trestle. The engineer said he did not know whether he
could move it until he got up more steam, but he believed the mail car
was already off the trestle. Burrow stepped back and asked the mail
agent to open the door, which he did. He then got up in the mail car.
What was said or done in there I do not know. He came out and said he
had the mail.
The engineer said he would have to get up more steam before he could
move the train, as he had on extra coaches that night. It took him a
few minutes to get up steam, and we remained there with him until he
pulled out. We were all close to the engine, and there was some talking
carried on, but I don’t remember what was said.
After the train pulled out we went off in an easterly direction; got
out a short distance and took the covers off the money, in order to get
rid of the weight, piled them up and set fire to them. Did not divide
the money then. The greenbacks were put in a sack; don’t remember who
had it; believe Burrow took the sack, and we divided the silver to make
it lighter for each one. Some time that day we divided the money. We
then traveled in an easterly direction until we crossed the Tombigbee
River. I think each of us got $1,150, making in all about $3,450. After
crossing the Tombigbee River we turned north, traveling up the river
until we got to Demopolis, Ala. There, after resting in the bottom a
couple of days, on Monday morning Smith took the train, either for
Montgomery or Birmingham (I can not say which), stating he was going
back to Lamar County. Burrow told him particularly to be cautious and
not to show his money. I have not seen Smith from that day to this.
Burrow and myself then kept on north until we got to Lamar County,
traveling on foot through the woods part of the time, and in the road
part of the time. Traveled mostly by day from Demopolis. Arrived at
old man Burrow’s some time in the night, and remained there a few days
until we rested up. The night we got there we did not sleep at all,
but stayed on the ground until nearly day, when we went into old man
Burrow’s barn, up in the loft. Some of them came out to the barn in
the morning, and we made our presence known. We remained in the barn a
couple of weeks; then we went up near Cash’s and remained there for a
week, he bringing our food to us.
We then went back to old man Allen Burrow’s; remained there a few days,
and decided to go down the country on a wagon. We were tired of having
to lie out in the bushes, and made up our minds to go south, after
discussing the matter. I proposed buying a horse; Burrow said he did
not want to go that way; he would rather take an ox-wagon and go. We
concluded at one time to walk, and got as far as Columbus, Miss., or
within a mile or two of that place, and there Burrow said if we went
back he would buy a team, and that if I would go with him with the team
he would pay my expenses. He offered to pay my expenses because I did
not want to go on the ox-cart. I decided to go back with him, but it
was against my will.
We went back to Lamar County, to old man Burrow’s house, and Rube
Burrow bought a team of oxen and a wagon. Jim Cash carried the team to
Columbus, Miss. Burrow and myself went to Columbus with Allen Burrow
in a covered wagon. We got out of the wagon within a few miles of
Columbus and old man Burrow went on to town. We waited awhile and then
went into the city, it being about dark when we got there. We then took
the team and drove over about three or four miles east of Columbus and
camped for the night. Next day we hitched up and drove on; camped when
night came on, and drove in the day-time until we got to Flomaton,
Ala., arriving there on the 14th of December, 1889.
I concluded I would not go into Florida with Burrow, but would go to
Louisiana. I boarded the train at Flomaton for New Orleans, where I
took the Texas Pacific Railway next day for the home of my uncle,
J. T. Harrell, at Pleasant Hill, Sabine Parish, La. He is a well-to-do
merchant there, and is the brother of my mother. I had not seen him
since my boyhood, and he knew nothing of my connection with Rube
Burrow. I represented to him that I had been in the cattle business in
Texas. I remained there till about the 15th of February. I passed the
time pleasantly, visiting in the town the friends and neighbors of my
uncle.
When Rube Burrow and I separated at Flomaton, Ala., we were to meet on
the 20th of February at what we supposed was a station called Dyers,
a few miles east of Mobile, on the L. & N. Road. When I went there on
February 20th I found there was nothing there but a switch. I failed to
meet Burrow, and went back to Mobile and to New Orleans; did not stay
at New Orleans; got there in the morning and left that night, going
back to Mobile. Remained there a few days and then went to Scranton
and remained there one day. I then went back to Mobile. I walked to
Scranton; took me several days, and did not stay there, but came back
to Mobile. Was sick at Mobile with measles two or three days. Remained
at Mobile until the middle of March, when I left and went to Meridian.
Stayed there until the first of April. Then went to Demopolis, and came
back to Meridian shortly. Made a trip to Vicksburg; stayed there two
weeks. Went back to Meridian and stayed there until the latter part of
April, and then decided I would go back into Lamar County, Ala. I got a
ticket from Meridian to Columbus; at Columbus I got off the train and
walked to Allen Burrow’s; got there in the night and went up in the
barn and went to sleep. That was the latter part of April or first of
May, 1890. The first person I met was Mrs. Burrow, who came out to the
barn; she asked where Rube Burrow was; told her I did not know where he
was; had not seen him since before Christmas. First heard them talking
about getting after Burrow in Florida, when I went to Dyer to meet him.
Mrs. Burrow did not know anything about this; asked me if I knew when
he would come; I told her I did not know. Remained in the barn that
day; that night I went in the house. Went up in the loft at Allen
Burrow’s house; they put bedclothes there and handed me food up in the
loft. Stayed there during the day all the time, from about the first
of May until last Tuesday, July 15th. Came down at night; did not go
anywhere at all; talked with old man Burrow very little.
When Rube Burrow and I agreed to meet at Dyer Station, on the L. & N.
Road, it was for the purpose of robbing a train on the Louisville and
Nashville Railway. He said if we did not meet on the 20th of February
at Dyer Station, that we would meet early in the fall in Lamar County;
think he said about September 1st. Waited for him at Dyer one day,
February 20th, as agreed, but he did not come. I heard, while at Bay
Minette, that the detectives had routed Rube in Florida, and therefore
did not much expect to meet him as agreed.
I left old man Burrow’s last Tuesday night on his mule, having made
arrangements with Cash to meet me, and Cash was to take me to Fernbank,
Ala. I borrowed $25 from Cash. He carried me within five or six miles
of Fernbank and turned back. I gave him my pistol, because I did not
intend to ever use another pistol. I felt bad, and said very little
to Cash. When we separated he asked me when I was coming back. I said
I reckoned I might be back in the fall. He did not seem to be anxious
about Rube, and said nothing about him.
Rube Burrow never talked with me about any particular robbery he
was engaged in, except at Genoa, Ark. He did tell me he was in that
robbery, and indirectly mentioned the Gordon and Ben Brook, Texas,
robberies, giving me to understand he was in those robberies also.
I have heard Rube Burrow say that if he was out of trouble, or if
he was where he could quit robbing trains, that he would stop it.
He thinks a great deal of his children, and is anxious to have them
educated, and spoke of coming back to Lamar County in the spring to see
if they were at school.
When I started from Allen Burrow’s on the 15th of July I intended to
go to Columbus, Miss., and from there to some point in Kentucky, and
intended to quit train robbing. That is why I gave away my pistols.
We got in the Duck Hill robbery about $1,500 in greenbacks, and about
$250 in silver. This we divided, each taking half. We did not rob the
mail at Duck Hill. Burrow wanted to do it, but I would not agree to
it. Burrow insisted on robbing the mail at Buckatunna, but Smith and I
protested against it. Burrow said, “If we can get away with one, we can
get away with the other; and if we are taken for one offense, we will
be taken for the other,” and insisted on robbing the mail, and carried
out his view.
My opinion about Rube Burrow is about as follows: I have often heard
him say that if the detectives crowded him that he would kill them, or
he would shoot his way out if they did not kill him. He said it would
be a life and death fight. I have heard him say more than once that
if he could get a large lot of money he would leave enough at home to
take care of his children, and then, if he could, would go off where he
would not be bothered, and lead a quiet life.
Am pretty well satisfied he will come back to Lamar County about
September 1st, because he said he would do so.
At one time, while in the cattle business at Fort Worth, Texas, I had
an encounter with a man who was a bully, and who was cutting up one
day, and in an insulting manner ordered me out of his way. I stepped
out of his way, but he kept annoying me, and I at last decided I did
not want any more of his talk, and told him so. He then cursed me, and
I cursed him also, and he drew a knife. I had a pistol, and walked up
to him and struck him on the arm, knocking the knife out of his hand,
and then knocked him down. Burrow witnessed the affair, and this was
probably the reason he chose me to help him in his train robberies.
I was never in a train robbery with Burrow in Texas, and he never
mentioned that he had engaged in train robbing in that State, except
indirectly, as I have stated.
When we started on the Arkansas trip I had one Colt’s forty-five
caliber pistol. Burrow had two forty-five caliber pistols. Had no
rifle. These were the arms we used in the Duck Hill robbery, and, as
far as I know, Rube Burrow now has these same pistols. They are not
double, but single action pistols. Burrow got from Connecticut a Marlin
rifle, thirty-eight caliber, in April, 1889. It holds fourteen or
fifteen cartridges.
At Duck Hill we tied our pocket handkerchiefs, such as we used daily,
around our faces, just before we boarded the engine. I do not remember
the color of the handkerchiefs. At Buckatunna I tied my handkerchief on
just before the train stopped. Burrow and Smith had theirs on when the
train stopped, and I suppose put them on before they boarded the train
at Buckatunna.
(Signed) L. C. BROCK, _alias_ Joe Jackson.
* * * * *
The foregoing statement being read in the presence of L. C. Brock, and
he having stated that the same is correct, we, the undersigned, do
hereby certify to the same, and agree that while Reuben Burrow is alive
the statement will not be made public.
G. W. AGEE,
T. V. JACKSON,
V. DELL.
* * * * *
The statement made by a so-called detective, Stout, in a publication
issued by him, that Rube Burrow was on the train at the time of
Jackson’s capture, dressed in female apparel, and escaped, like many
other accounts in that volume, is a silly fabrication.
Joe Jackson was brought to Memphis and quartered in the building of
the Southern Express Company, on North Court Street, for several days.
He was confronted with the evidence of his crimes by the express
officials. The chain of testimony which had been riveted about him,
from the day he joined Burrow, was unfolded to him link by link, and
he was told to choose between a trial for the Duck Hill affair, in
which the penalty was hanging, for the murder of Chester Hughes, and
that of Buckatunna, where the penalty was imprisonment for life. For
two days Joe held out, still denying the crimes charged, but, finally,
on the morning of the third day, when he found he was to be taken to
Duck Hill, he agreed to give a full statement of his participation in
the Duck Hill and Buckatunna robberies, and to narrate the story of
the movements of Rube Burrow and himself from the day they first met
until they separated in December, 1889. The sole stipulation was that
his confession should not be made public while Rube Burrow lived, a
promise which was faithfully kept by the express officials, satisfied,
as they were, that the knowledge they possessed would soon enable them
to capture Rube Burrow, then the last member of his band at liberty.
CHAPTER XVII.
RUBE SMITH’S PLOT TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON--HIS PLANS DISCOVERED--THE
TELL-TALE LETTERS.
Rube Smith, having been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, was,
therefore, a convict in the state-prison when Brock, _alias_ Jackson,
was carried there on July 21st for safe keeping. Smith was at work in
the prison shop when Brock was taken within the gates and given a seat
in the prison-yard, about thirty feet from the shop window. An official
of the Southern Express Company, with Detective Jackson, approached
Rube and said:
“Well, Rube, we have Joe Jackson.”
Smith had not heard of the capture, and was evidently somewhat
embarrassed at the announcement. Quickly rallying, however, he answered:
“I don’t know Joe Jackson--never saw him in my life.”
“Come with me to the window,” said the official.
Rube walked over to the window, and Joe being pointed out, Rube said:
“No, sir, I never saw that man before.”
On being told he was Rube Burrow’s partner, Smith repeated what he was
often wont to say:
“I have not seen Rube Burrow since I was a small boy,” and again he
denied his guilt.
“Ah,” said the official, “We have new evidence against you, Rube. We
know that Mrs. Allen Burrow visited your father’s, and through her you
sent a message to Rube Burrow that you wanted to see him; and we know
that Ann Eliza brought the answer from Rube that he would meet you in
Fellowship church-yard. We know just where you met before the robbery,
and we know you parted at Demopolis, Ala., after the work was done.”
This information, which was literally true, was adroitly given Rube for
a purpose, and convinced him that the coils were tightening, and that
additional evidence had, indeed, been secured.
Rube Smith, though not as old in crime as his copartners, was not a
whit less bold and desperate. While in jail at Meridian, pending his
trial at Waynesboro, he had been discovered in a plot to kill the
jailer and liberate himself and others. He had not been at Jackson
thirty days before it was developed that he was scheming to make his
escape, and for this offense he then wore a heavy ball and chain.
Bold and unscrupulous, he was ready to take the life of any man who
stood between him and liberty. He was, however, very secretive and
self-possessed, and up to this time he had not, from the day of his
arrest, spoken a word which could be used as evidence against him.
Jeff. Moody, a convict from Itawamba County, was on the eve of
being liberated, having served his time. Smith, in his desperation,
sought Moody as a medium through which to communicate with friends
on the outside, through whose aid he hoped to make his escape. After
cautiously canvassing the matter, Smith unfolded to Moody his plan
of escape, commissioning him to take letters to his father, who was
requested to buy pistols, which Moody was to bring to the prison; and
as all the guards were withdrawn from the walls of the prison at night,
under Moody’s guidance Jim Barker was to scale the walls and hide the
pistols in a drawer of Smith’s work-bench, and at the tap of the six
o’clock bell the succeeding night, after the guards had been called
in, and while the prisoners were being conducted to their cells, Smith
expected to furnish Brock, and a fellow convict who had been taken
into the scheme, a pistol each. The inside guards were to be “held up”
and disarmed, after the fashion of train robbers, and thereby they
would effect their escape. As the letters show clearly the bold, bad
character of the man, they are herewith given literally:
Aug. the 24, 1890.
_Dear Father_:
I seat my sef to rite you a few lines to let you no what I want you
to do for me. James cash has told all he noes. they are a going
to use him fore a wittness against me--he sot the trap to cetch
Jackson, they have got him heare now. Agee told me all a bout Miss
Burrow & Anlizer a coming up thaire. He told me rite where wee got
together at & where I left them at, som body has told them that
noes somthing. Jackson ses he hant told them nothing. he ses his
name is not Jackson, it is Winslow. He told me that James cash set
the trap for him he sed that no body node he was coming but Cash,
so it look very darke for me theay have got all under holt now
everything is a working aginst me heare but if you will doo what I
want you to do I will leave them the Bag to hold themselves. I mean
just what I say and nothing elce. Now I will begin to tell you what
it is so look on the other side. I want you to see that I get what
I want. I want you to send me three good Pistols. thay will cost a
bout $15 a peace but you be shore to get them I want them to bee 45
caliber I want the Best ingraned Smith & wesson or colt’s, one or
the other. I want you to get Uncle James Barker to cum with this
man to bring them to me he noes just how to get them to me If I had
them I can get a way without having to fire a shot I no Just what
I am talking a bout now. thay are goin to send me up salt creak
if they can. this is all the chance for me and I no it & if you
dont do something now I am going to give the gards a faire shot at
me--if theay kill me all rite & if they miss me all rite but if you
will do what I want you to do theay wont bee eny Danger of geting
hurt for i can make them turn me rite out without eny truble.
REUBEN SMITH.
* * * * *
August the 24 1890.
_Dear father_:
I seat myself to rite you a few lines to let you no that I am well
at this time hoping those few lines may find you the same. I have
no news to rite onley times is mity hard here. My Dear father as I
state in my other note what I want you to do fore me I do ernestly
pray that you will doo it. You know that I would not reckment a
man to you that I thought would get you in truble. I have bin with
Mr. Moody for some time he has proved to bee a friend too me so
faire he has bin heare for three years he noes the triels and
trubles of this place he is not in very good helth as you will
see. I want you to give him as good treatment as you can for he
deserves it, as you will have to pay all the expences a bout this
matter when he has done thease matters I want you to see him home
all rite so I will close hoping success to all. Yours truley, from
Reuben Smith to Mr. James Smith, in ceare of a friend.
* * * * *
_My Dear father_:
I seat myself to rite you a few lines to let you know that I am
well. I have lernt a good eal a bout what theay Aim to do, theay
aim to use James cash as a witness a gainst me and sum of uncle
allen Burrow’s folks. Now heare is a man that has bin heare serving
his three years in the penitenchery and after his time was out
theay warnt willing to turn him loos thin. he is a good man & I
think he is all rite. I want you to treat this man rite & give him
Plenty to eat and when he Brings me my things then I want you to
fix him up all rite. I want you to get uncle Jim to cum with him
heare you will have to beare his expences heare and back it will
be easy done he can get me eny thing that I want and he wont bee
in any danger hardly at all he noes where to put them for me &
everything will Bee in a nut shell. Bring me a bout 20 dollars in
money & put it with the pistols I want good pistols. I want sum
like the one that I had if you can get them of that cind. I want
the .45 caliber be shore and get me plenty of catriges He can
tell you all a bout me I dont think he will tell you a ly to get
the advantage of you I have watch him close evry since I have bin
heare i think he will doo what he ses he will do. he has got a
family at hom a looking for him & after he dos what he can for me I
want you to see him hom all rite. he can tell you how everything is
heare and how me & him has got it fixt up. it will haft to bee don
after dark. Dont fail to Do this for I no it is all the chance for
me if you let this chance pass you may never get a nother as good
as this so I feel that my hold life is in your hands dont fail
whatever.
Yours truley,
REUBEN SMITH.
Moody had disclosed to the prison officials the proposition of Smith
to send these letters out by him, and had been instructed to humor
the plot. Meantime the express officials had been notified of Moody’s
disclosures, and of the date he would be released, and the letters were
thus secured and made important links in the chain of evidence against
Smith.
CHAPTER XVIII.
RUBE BURROW HARBORED IN SANTA ROSA--THE FLOMATON ROBBERY.
Santa Rosa County, in which Rube sought refuge from the unflagging
pursuit of the detectives, is one of the northwestern counties of
Florida, its northern boundary being the Alabama line. Escambia River,
whose blue waters are dotted with numerous islets, marks its western
limits, and flowing onward into Pensacola Bay, interlocks the many
inlets and lakes that indent its shores.
Santa Rosa Island, stretching itself along its whole southern border,
in the white-crested waters of the Gulf of Mexico, seems to stand as
a sentry to guard its serf-beaten coast. The county is more than half
the size of the State of Delaware. It embraces 1,260 square miles of
territory, and has a population of only 7,500, or about six persons to
every square mile, and the major portion of this population is confined
to Milton, the county seat, and other towns lying along the Pensacola
and Atlantic Railway.
Yellow, East Bay, Juniper and Blackwater Rivers all find their channels
to the estuaries of the Gulf through Santa Rosa. In this isolated
and uninhabited district, amid the hooting of owls, the hissing of
reptiles, and the snarling of wild beasts, as ever and anon they
were startled from their dark coverts, Detective Jackson quietly but
persistently followed the outlaw.
On February 15th, about twenty miles north of Broxton’s ferry, Jackson
found Rube’s trail, and reaching a landing on Yellow River, ascertained
that a boy had taken him across about one hour before his arrival.
Learning that the boy had been instructed to pull the boat half a mile
down stream before landing on the opposite shore, Jackson, being afoot
and finding no other boat could be secured, swam the stream, and making
his way, with great difficulty, through the canebrake, down the river’s
bank, found, on meeting the boy, that Rube was only half an hour ahead
of him.
Pushing forward, he pursued the trail, though without result, until
darkness compelled him to abandon it and shelter himself, as best he
could, in the marshy bottoms of Yellow River.
Some weeks after this the outlaw was located in the vicinity of East
Bay, about four miles from the Gulf coast, in one of the wildest
of Florida’s jungles. Here lived Charles Wells, with his two sons
and two daughters, in a dilapidated cabin, whose roof was thatched
with cane from the brake not twenty paces distant. Wells bore a very
unsavory reputation throughout all that section, and was known to
harbor criminals of every class and type. His fealty to the criminal
classes who sought refuge in the wilds of Santa Rosa had been tested
full many a time, and Rube was not long in ascertaining that in the
person of Wells he would find a friend, whose dark record of crime
gave ample surety of his zeal in the cause of lawlessness. In this
secluded spot Rube found shelter during the spring and summer of 1890,
never venturing, at any time, however, to trust himself in the cabin
of Wells. He lived in the canebrakes like a beast, and defied the most
vigilant efforts of the detectives to dislodge him.
Meantime Detective Jackson was withdrawn from Florida early in July to
look after Brock, _alias_ Jackson, and his capture having been effected
the detective returned about August 1st to Florida, to renew his
pursuit of Rube.
While searching the swamps of Santa Rosa, Detective Jackson learned
that Rube claimed to know one John Barnes, of Baldwin County, Ala.,
and the information that Barnes had taught him how to saw logs was
confirmed by the confession of Brock that Barnes was a laborer in the
camp on Lovette’s creek, where all three of the men had worked in
March, 1888. With some difficulty the detective found Barnes, who lived
on a small farm about twelve miles from Castleberry, Ala. Barnes soon
convinced Jackson that the man known to him as Ward was Rube Burrow.
Barnes was selected to go into Santa Rosa County and endeavor to toll
the outlaw from his hiding place, or else definitely locate him, and
thus enable the detectives to capture him. Barnes was peculiarly fitted
for the task. The Indian blood that coursed through his veins gave him
both nerve and cunning. He was a native of Santa Rosa, and, as boy and
man, had traversed fen and swamp till he knew every bear trail and deer
stand in that entire section.
About August 20th Barnes went into Santa Rosa County to make a
_reconnaissance_, and in a few days visited Wells, to whom he was well
known. Barnes intimated to Wells that he expected to leave Alabama
and settle in Santa Rosa County, and fortunately for his plans Wells
suggested a copartnership between Burrow and Barnes, to which the
latter, feigning reluctance, finally consented. Barnes remained long
enough at Wells’ cabin to receive a message from Rube that he would
meet him on Sunday, August 31st, in that vicinity. Barnes returned
to his father’s home, about eighteen miles distant, and reported the
result to Jackson, who was enjoying the quiet of camp life, within
easy reach of the home of the elder Barnes. Why Rube should postpone
the meeting for a week and enjoin Barnes, as he did through Wells, to
return, was a mystery. Upon Barnes’ return to Wells, as appointed, he
was advised that Rube had declined the proffered partnership and would
not see him. Rube knew the detectives were in Santa Rosa, and shrewdly
suspecting that Barnes was being used to entrap him he refused all
alliance with him.
While Barnes was vainly endeavoring to negotiate a copartnership
between Rube and himself, the wily outlaw was planning another train
robbery.
It was suggested to Brock, _alias_ Jackson, a few days after his
arrest, that all of Rube’s partners being captured he would doubtless
recruit his forces before robbing another train. Brock replied, “If
Rube takes a notion to rob a train by himself, he will do it.”
When it was reported, therefore, that the north-bound express on the
Louisville and Nashville Railway had been boarded on the night of
September 1, 1890, at Flomaton, Ala., only about seventy-five miles
from the hiding place of Rube Burrow, it was quite evident that the
bold adventure was the work of the famous bandit.
It was a _chef-d’œuvre_, in the execution of which he doubtless
congratulated himself. That a man should, under any circumstances,
successfully hold an entire train crew at bay, and, single-handed,
rob the express car, is a deed of such daring as to almost challenge
admiration, at least for his dauntless courage, whatever may be thought
of his lawless purpose; but that a man hunted down by detectives,
living like a wild beast in the swamps, afraid to show his face in
daylight because of their dreaded presence, should emerge from his
place of concealment and rob the very corporation whose sleuth hounds
had tracked him to his lair, betokens a degree of audacity unparalleled
in the history of crime or the realms of fiction. Rube is credited with
possessing a sense of the ridiculous, inherent in the Burrow family,
and doubtless this turning of the tables on his would-be captors
appealed strongly to his sense of humor, if, indeed, the dare-devil
deed was not inspired thereby.
The train pulled into the station of Flomaton about ten P. M., where it
was delayed some twenty minutes in awaiting the Pensacola connection.
Meantime a tall man, coarsely dressed, was seen to mount the steps
of the express car, next the engine, and look in upon the messenger
through the glass door in the end of the car. When he came down from
the car he was seen to have a coal pick, which he had taken from the
tender of the engine. A few minutes afterward, just as the train was
pulling out, he ran toward the engine and mounted it. The yard-master
observed these movements, but simply thought the man was some employe
of the railway.
Before the train was fairly under headway the engineer, facing about,
saw himself and fireman covered by two revolvers in the hands of a man
whose face was masked and who held under his arm a coal pick.
“Pull ahead and stop the train with the express car on the north side
of Escambia River bridge, or I will blow the top of your head off,” was
the stern command.
“All right, Captain,” said the engineer.
The bridge was about three quarters of a mile north of the station.
While _en route_, Rube said:
“If you obey my orders, I will not harm you, but the penalty is instant
death if you disobey.”
On arriving at the bridge the sharp command “Stop!” was given, and the
engineer instantly complied.
“Get down,” said Rube to the engineer and fireman, and he followed the
two men to the ground.
The colored fireman, as soon as he reached _terra firma_, made instant
flight from the scene. Rube fired two shots at him as he fled, which
had no other effect, however, than to increase his speed.
When called upon afterwards to explain the cause of his retreat, the
darkey replied:
“I thought I heerd him say run, and as we was all ’beyin’ orders, I
run.”
Rube now ordered the engineer to take the coal pick which he gave him
and break in the front door of the express car. While the engineer was
engaged in doing so, Rube, standing on the platform of the car behind
him, fired five shots into the air on the one side, and four shots on
the other side, and by this ruse made it appear that the woods were
full of robbers.
Johnson, the messenger of the Southern Express Company, stood on the
floor of his car, pistol in hand, as the engineer entered, the door
being broken through, and manifested a disposition to resist the attack
upon his car. Rube, however, standing in the doorway, covered him with
his two Colt’s revolvers, and threatening to shoot both engineer and
messenger, the latter, being entreated also by the engineer, like Ben
Battle, of old, “laid down his arms.”
Rube threw a sack to the engineer, not trusting himself to cross the
portals of the doorway in which he stood, and bade him hold it, while
the messenger was ordered to place within it the contents of his safe.
The messenger complied, but the bulk of the matter placed in the sack
was so small that Rube insisted he had not received all. The messenger,
taking from his safe a book, said:
“This is all--do you want this?”
“No,” said Rube, “don’t put that in.”
“Give me your pistol,” then said Rube, “butt end foremost.”
The messenger complied, and Rube backed out of the car, saying to the
messenger and engineer:
“If you poke your heads out of the car before I get out of sight, I
will shoot them off.”
The work was done so quickly that the passengers were hardly aware of
what had occurred until all was over. The conductor, who came forward
and entered the rear compartment of the express car, which was used
for baggage, while the messenger was delivering the contents of his
safe, was observed by Rube and ordered to retreat. Taking in the
situation, the conductor deemed prudence the better part of valor, and
complied.
This proved to be Rube’s last exploit at train robbing, and he secured
only the pitiful sum of $256.19.
Officers of the Express Company, with several detectives, arrived on
the scene the next day, and it was soon ascertained that Rube had gone
back into Santa Rosa County, from which he was quickly driven by the
detectives, on the long, last chase of his career.
CHAPTER XIX.
RUBE ROUTED FROM FLORIDA--THE CHASE INTO MARENGO COUNTY, ALA.--
HIS CAPTURE.
The detectives of the Southern Express Company were only a few hours
behind the outlaw when he reached his lair in Santa Rosa County on the
third day after the Flomaton robbery. Anticipating his return an effort
was made to cut off his retreat. Rube, however, had twenty-four hours
the start, and being at home in the swamps, succeeded in eluding his
pursuers.
It was now determined by the officers of the Southern Express Company
to organize a posse under the leadership of Detective Thomas Jackson
and drive the bandit from the swamps of Santa Rosa and capture him at
whatever cost and hazard.
Detectives Stewart and Kinsler, of the Louisville and Nashville Railway
service, were detailed to aid Jackson, and several other trusted men
were added to the posse.
“Go into Santa Rosa and capture Rube, or drive him out,” was the order
given.
The faithful detectives, willing to brook any toil and brave any
danger, however hazardous, pledged their best efforts to carry out the
order.
The expedition, having been provided with ten days’ rations, quietly
set out for Santa Rosa County on the 12th of September.
John Barnes, who had returned, having failed in his attempted treaty
with Rube, was the trusted guide. Leaving the Pensacola and Atlantic
Railway at a flag station south of Milton, the party set out afoot
across the swamps for Wells’ cabin, distant about thirty-five miles.
The difficulties which beset the journey, however, were so numerous
that three days were consumed in arriving at their destination.
Reaching the vicinity of Wells’ home soon after dark on the 15th of
September, the cabin was surrounded, and sentries, under cover of the
adjacent cane and brush, began watch. Morning came, and with it the
detectives hoped Rube would appear, either to enter the cabin for food,
or, if sheltered there the previous night, he could be seen going
out. Not so. For three days and nights a close watch was kept under
circumstances of hardship and suffering which sorely taxed the capacity
of the detectives. Driven by hunger and thirst, they finally resolved
upon a strategy which in time brought good results.
About sunrise on the morning of the 18th of September the detectives
closed in upon the cabin. Rube was not found. It was evident, however,
that he was in the immediate vicinity. A trunk, containing a suit of
clothing, an overcoat and some small articles, was found in the cabin,
and the property was confessed to be that of Ward. Searching the trunk,
Jackson found $35 in currency, which bore the marks of having been
stitched while in the custody of the express company. The money being
claimed by Wells, other money was exchanged for it, but the clothes
were taken in charge. The detectives now resolved to starve Rube
out--to hold his commissary and prevent the issue of any supplies.
While the detectives were in ambush about the cabin, visits were being
made by members of the Wells household to Rube, but it was impossible
to follow these scouts without disclosing the presence of the
detectives. The wild solitude of the place quickened the ears of these
lawless people to the least sound, and the snapping of a cane in the
brake or the sound of a footstep was regarded as a signal of danger.
The very profession of these people was to harbor thieves.
Once in possession of the Wells domicile the detectives put the whole
family under close surveillance. They virtually made prisoners of them.
Deploying part of their forces in the adjacent canebrakes, they swept
every trail for miles around, and made it impossible for the outlaw to
find food in any part of that section.
While scouring the swamps Detective Jackson learned from a thoroughly
reliable source that Rube had crossed Yellow River just above the
Florida line on the 25th of September.
The order had been carried out--Rube had been routed from the swamps of
Santa Rosa. The detectives were at once withdrawn from Florida. Barnes,
the guide, hurried home, his presence not having been disclosed while
in the Wells neighborhood.
Jackson was now making ready to strike the trail of Rube who, he felt
sure, had crossed the Alabama line, when, on September 29th, the
following telegram from John Barnes was received:
“Ward, the man you call Rube Burrow, took breakfast at my house this
morning and left at noon, going by way of Repton, Ala. Send Jackson
with sufficient force to capture him.”
The express official who received the message had talked with Barnes
and knew that Ward and Burrow were identical. There could be no
mistake. Instant pursuit was organized.
Rube had called at the home of Barnes early in the morning and asked
for something to eat. Barnes recognized him instantly as Rube Burrow,
_alias_ Ward. He felt sure that while piloting the detectives in and
about Rube’s den in the canebrakes of Santa Rosa his identity had been
disclosed and the outlaw had come to seek revenge. Barnes invited his
unexpected and unwelcome guest in, with fear and trembling.
Rube being seated, Barnes went into the kitchen to assist his wife in
preparing breakfast. Barnes said to his wife, who knew the history of
his trip into Florida:
“That man is Rube Burrow, and I believe he has come here to kill me,
and if he does so, you will know who murdered me.”
Barnes was without fire-arms of any kind, and although not wanting in
courage, felt the struggle with the armed outlaw would be an unequal
one if he should either attempt to arrest him, or if Rube should attack
him.
Making an excuse to leave the house for a few minutes, Barnes sent a
message to Mr. Johnson, a neighbor who lived only a half-mile distant,
to come to his aid, but Johnson was not at home.
Rube’s breakfast was soon prepared, and as he seemed very peaceably
inclined, Barnes incidentally mentioned that he had worked, in March,
1888, at a log camp in Baldwin County. Finally Barnes suggested that
his guest’s face seemed familiar. Rube replied, “I guess not,” and
refused to renew his acquaintance with Barnes, and, as subsequent
events proved, was firm in the belief that Barnes had forgotten him.
Rube provided himself with about two days’ rations, which he paid
Barnes liberally for, and resumed his journey, after making inquiries,
according to his custom, for points in various directions.
Barnes went immediately to Castleberry and sent the telegram referred
to, and waited there until joined by the express officials and
detectives, at midnight, September 30th.
Detectives Jackson and Kinsler started on the trail at once. Detective
Barnes, of the L. & N. Railway, accompanied them, having in charge a
brace of well-trained blood-hounds, should their use become necessary.
Jackson correctly surmised that Rube was making for Lamar County, and
he therefore set out for Bell’s Landing, about fifty miles distant, and
on the line of route to Lamar County.
About noon the next day, and when within ten miles of the Alabama
River, the detectives found they were but three hours behind the
outlaw, who was traveling in the direction of Bell’s Landing. Reaching
the farm of John McDuffie, seven miles from Bell’s Landing, Jackson
requested his assistance, disclosing to him the information that he was
in hot pursuit of Rube Burrow. McDuffie had been recommended to Jackson
by the sheriff of that (Monroe) county as a brave and fearless man,
and Jackson felt that his assistance would be, as subsequent events
confirmed, a valuable acquisition to the posse.
Guarding all the adjacent landings on the river that night, the
detectives were quite sure that Rube had not crossed the Alabama River
at daylight on the morning of October 3d. While reconnoitering in the
vicinity of Bell’s Landing, about ten o’clock that morning a negro came
with a message from Mrs. McDuffie that Rube was then eating breakfast
at a negro cabin on McDuffie’s farm, then six miles distant.
[Illustration: JOHN MC DUFFIE.]
Under whip and spur John McDuffie led the party back to his farm. The
cabin was quickly surrounded. It was soon ascertained that Rube had
breakfasted, and taking the only boat at the landing had put himself
across the river about thirty minutes before the arrival of the posse.
Again had luck favored the outlaw, and a chance half hour’s time had
intervened to save him from certain capture.
It was discovered that Rube had made a bed of some brush under the
cliff near the brink of the river and had slept there the previous
night. His appearance at the cabin for breakfast was reported by the
colored people to Mrs. McDuffie, who immediately sent a courier to
her husband. A few minutes after the posse reached the cabin, Mrs.
McDuffie, having walked from her home, two miles away, arrived.
“What are you doing here,” said her husband.
Mrs. McDuffie answered: “Oh, I thought the boy might not find you, and
I would come down and get a good description of Rube, so as to help you
to find him if he should leave.”
Mrs. McDuffie was escorted by Master McDuffie, only six years of age.
Bravo to this courageous woman. While all who know her do homage to
her many womanly graces, let the brave Mrs. John McDuffie be laurelled
among the bravest of the matrons of the South.
An accurate description of Rube was obtained from the colored people,
who reported that he had three pistols and a rifle.
The detectives were obliged to go down the river six miles before they
could cross. Pushing forward, they crossed the Alabama River with
all possible dispatch. Hoping that Rube would leave the swamps after
crossing the river and take the one public highway leading towards
Demopolis, a covered wagon was hired. Into this wagon the detectives
and McDuffie crowded themselves and ordered the driver onward. The
pursuit was now hot and success seemed certain. Every moment the posse
expected to receive from the driver the preconcerted signal that the
fugitive had been overtaken, when they would cover him with their guns
and demand his surrender.
In eager expectancy the detectives journeyed for ten miles by wagon,
and until darkness ended all hope of overtaking the outlaw that day.
Sending back for their horses, the chase was resumed next morning on
horseback.
When within two miles of Thomasville, Ala., Saturday, October 4th,
the pursuing party found Rube only two hours ahead. From this point
telegrams were sent to the express officials, who repaired to
Demopolis, Ala., feeling confident that Rube was _en route_ to Lamar
County, and would cross the Tombigbee River in that vicinity.
Jackson pursued the trail in every possible direction from Thomasville,
and confirmed his theory that Rube, traveling under cover of the
woods, was avoiding the public highways. He therefore deemed it best
to ride into Demopolis, thirty-five miles distant, that night, and
organize other possees and guard all the adjacent river landings.
Early Sunday morning, October 5th, found the officers of the Express
Company and the detectives in conference at Demopolis. It was decided
to organize in a quiet way additional possees to guard the river
landings and to search the northern district of Marengo County, in
which it was certain the outlaw had gone. Scores of the good people of
that section joined in the chase.
Marengo County, by Sunday night, had been organized into one vast army
of detectives. At daylight on Monday morning it was known that Rube had
not crossed the river. The search was therefore renewed with unceasing
vigilance. Knowing that the outlaw was apt to visit a negro cabin
for food, the white planters were apprised of the situation and were
especially enjoined to put their colored employes on watch.
About midnight on Monday, Jackson and McDuffie returned to Demopolis,
and no tidings of the outlaw, up to that hour, had been received.
However, about three o’clock A. M., Tuesday, a courier, sent by Mr.
D. J. Meadow, brought the news that Rube had been seen about dark three
miles from Beckley’s Landing, about eighteen miles south of Demopolis.
It was surmised that the outlaw, being so close to the river, would
possibly cross that night.
Jackson went down on the west side of the river, while McDuffie took
the east bank. While _en route_, McDuffie was joined by J. D. Carter,
who, infused by the spirit that prevailed among the good people of that
section, expressed a desire to assist in the chase. McDuffie and Carter
joined each other at noon, and deploying the men under him through the
bottoms, McDuffie was soon alone with Carter.
Meantime Jesse Hildreth, a very worthy and reliable colored man, had
discovered Rube in an abandoned cabin Tuesday morning. Hildreth had
noticed smoke arising from the cabin chimney the night previous, and
repairing thither early next morning found the outlaw asleep. He woke
him and at once recognized the fugitive described to him the previous
day. Rube said he was hunting work, and asked Jesse to get him some
coffee. Jesse, pretending to be in search of his horse, told Rube he
would go by home and order coffee sent him. Jesse kept watch on the
cabin, and finding Rube about to depart, rejoined him at the cabin and
endeavored to detain him by selling Rube his horse. Rube, however,
did not want to buy a horse, and asked the way to Blue Lick. Jesse,
determined to keep Rube in sight, offered to go and show him the way.
Rube mounted Jesse’s horse, while the latter walked.
About noon, while passing the house of a colored man, George Ford,
Jesse suggested to Rube, as it had begun to rain very hard, to stop
and get dinner, and wait till the rain should be over. To this Rube
consented. While dinner was being prepared, Jesse, on the alert for
“some of the bosses,” as he expressed it, went out of the house. Frank
Marshal, a colored man, who was also looking for the stranger, at this
moment rode up to the cabin. Jesse quickly explained that the man was
in Ford’s house, and while the colored men were in conference they
discovered, to their great joy, two white men about a quarter of a mile
distant, riding in their direction. Joining them at the foot of the
hill the two men proved to be McDuffie and Carter.
Ford’s cabin was in an open field, and McDuffie and Carter found they
could not approach it within less than two hundred yards without being
seen. It was agreed that Jesse and Frank should go ahead, enter the
cabin, seize the outlaw, and give the signal to McDuffie and Carter,
who would approach cautiously under cover.
Entering the cabin, the negroes found Rube making ready for his
departure, having eaten dinner. He was wholly unsuspicious of anything
wrong in the movements of the colored men, however. Rube was in the act
of wrapping his trusty Marlin rifle in an oil cloth, when Jesse said:
“Boss, let me wrap it for you.”
Rube handed the rifle to Jesse, who carefully wrapped it, and feigning
to hand it back, dropped it. Quick as thought Jesse gathered his great
brawny arms about the outlaw, and with a grip like that of an octopus
he struggled for the mastery. Frank Marshal threw himself upon the
outlaw at the same time, but not being very robust, was not able to
greatly assist Jesse. The latter was as strong as an ox. His weight was
one hundred and eighty lbs., his height about five feet ten inches, and
there was not an ounce of surplus flesh upon him. He wore no shoes, and
his great, broad feet looked as big as a pair of Virginia hams.
“Where was Frank while you were struggling with Rube?” said some one
afterwards to Jesse.
“Fore de Lord, boss, he had his mouf full of Frank.”
Rube had caught Frank’s shoulder in his teeth, while Jesse grappled
with him. Biting Frank and stamping Jesse’s bare feet, the outlaw
struggled with herculean strength for liberty. He dragged his captors
across the floor of the little cabin, shaking it from bottom to top.
The noise of the scuffle within was heard by McDuffie and Carter, who
meanwhile had been quietly approaching. Just at the moment when Rube
was falling to the floor, the colored men on top, they rushed in, and
seizing Rube, disarmed him. He was searched and tied before being
allowed to rise. A Colt s revolver, forty-five caliber, and $175 were
found on his person.
The capture was made about one o’clock P. M., eighteen miles from
Demopolis. His captors concluded to avoid the risk of escape consequent
upon a journey after dark to Demopolis, and, therefore, took him to
Linden, the county seat, only nine miles distant.
Rube was made to mount McDuffie’s horse, with his hands tied in front,
his arms pinioned by tight cords to his body, and his feet tied
underneath the animal. McDuffie mounted behind the prisoner, and,
escorted by Carter and the two colored heroes, Hildreth and Marshal,
the party set out for Linden, reaching there just at dark. The great
desperado was in the toils of his pursuers at last. He was destined,
however, in a short time, to outwit his captors, and to perform the
last and most daring exploit of his career.
CHAPTER XX.
RUBE’S LAST DESPERATE ACT--ESCAPE FROM JAIL--THE DEADLY DUEL ON THE
STREETS OF LINDEN--THE OUTLAW KILLED.
On arrival at Linden, the sheriff being absent with the keys, the
prisoner was taken to a room of the jail. The ropes still bound his
hands, heavy iron shackles were locked around his ankles, and the chain
uniting them was securely fastened to the floor.
McDuffie repaired to the telephone office and reported the capture to
the express officials at Demopolis. After obtaining a full description
of the outlaw from McDuffie, and being satisfied the right man had been
captured, McDuffie was asked:
“How many pistols had he?”
“Only one,” said McDuffie.
“There must be some mistake,” answered the express official; “he had
three when he crossed the Alabama River.”
“Rube says he has sold the other two,” was the answer.
“Rube never sells pistols,” replied the official, and knowing from the
reports received that Rube always carried a sack, the inquiry was:
“What’s in the sack?”
“Nothing but provisions,” answered McDuffie.
The official then instructed McDuffie to handcuff and shackle the
prisoner, put him in a cell of the jail and place half dozen men on
guard.
McDuffie replied: “There are forty men on guard.”
Indeed, the whole town of Linden surrounded the jail, and McDuffie’s
answer was not, perhaps, exaggerated.
When Rube’s supper was brought his hands were untied that he might
eat and they were not again manacled. Rube sat and joked with his
guards and visitors, entertaining them with his droll humor, which
seemed never to forsake him. His shoes were badly worn, and a visitor
remarking it, said:
“Rube, your shoes are badly run down--you need a new pair.”
“Yes,” replied Rube, “some people always praise their shoes up, but I
always run mine down.”
One by one the visitors dropped out, and at midnight John McDuffie,
Jesse Hildreth and Frank Marshall were left in charge of the prisoner.
Carter, not feeling well, had retired to Glass’ store, just across the
street from the jail. He had possession of Rube’s rifle and money.
George Ford, in whose cabin the capture occurred, found, after the
departure of the prisoner, a greasy cloth sack, and knowing it to
be the property of Rube, carried it to Linden, arriving some half
hour after the prisoner. He deposited the sack on the steps of the
court-house and reported the fact to the colored men, who informed
McDuffie. It was said to contain provisions.
About four o’clock A. M. Rube complained that he was hungry. McDuffie
said:
“You will have to await the usual hour for breakfast. I can not get
anything to eat now.”
“Where is my grub sack?” said Rube.
“George left it on the court-house steps,” said Frank.
“Mr. McDuffie, please send Frank for it. I have some ginger snaps and
some candy in it, and I will give the boys some; I reckon they are
hungry, too,” said Rube.
McDuffie consented, and when Frank returned he did not even look to
see what was handed Rube. For full half an hour the wily prisoner sat
eating ginger snaps and candy from the sack, which he occasionally
shared with the colored men. Watching his chance, Rube suddenly pulled
from the sack one of his trusty pistols, and covering McDuffie, who sat
only about ten feet away, said:
“If you make a move I will kill you.”
McDuffie’s pistol was lying in a chair beside him. Rube, turning to
Jesse, said:
“Hand me that pistol quick, or I will shoot your head off.”
Jesse tremblingly obeyed, and Rube covered all three of the guards with
the two pistols. He then bade Jesse unlock his shackles. This being
done, he said:
“Now put them on McDuffie.”
McDuffie protested and made a motion to approach Rube, but seeing he
was powerless, said:
“All right, Rube; you have the drop, and can have your way.”
Rube then made Jesse shackle McDuffie and Marshal together. Taking the
key of the jail-yard door from the chair where McDuffie had placed
it, Rube, jumping up about two feet from the floor, cracked his heels
together and exclaimed:
“I have the big key to the jail. I am boss of the town, and as some
people say I am not Rube Burrow, I will paint Linden red, and show them
who I am.”
He then ordered Jesse to go with him to find Carter. Carter’s exact
whereabouts were not known to either Rube or Jesse. To the hotel and
thence to the sheriff’s office they journeyed, and spending nearly an
hour in a fruitless search for Carter, Rube thought Jesse was purposely
delaying him.
“I will kill you,” said Rube, “if I find you are fooling with me.”
Jesse, however, was innocent. He did not know where Carter could be
found. Further inquiry developed that he was in Glass’ store. Rube
knocked loudly on the door, and stepping aside, covered Jesse with his
pistol, and in a stern whisper said:
“Tell him the express people have come, and McDuffie wants him at the
jail quick.”
A clerk answered the call to the door, and to him Jesse repeated the
order in a voice loud enough to be heard by Carter, who was in the rear
part of the store. Carter’s footsteps could be distinctly heard as he
came across the floor. Just as he appeared in the doorway Rube threw
himself in front of him, and placing his pistol within a few inches of
Carter’s breast, commanded:
“Give me my rifle and my money, or I will shoot your head off.”
Carter, instantly taking in the situation, replied, “All right,” and
placing his hand in his hip pocket, pulled a thirty-two caliber Smith &
Wesson pistol.
The hour was just at dawn of day. The two men stood face to face, the
one gleaming with rage and thirsting for revenge, the other cool,
fearless and determined, with law and justice on his side, not to
accede to the outlaw’s demand.
When the sheen of Carter’s pistol flashed upon Rube’s vision the outlaw
fired, and Carter, anticipating the shot, threw his body to the right.
The ball pierced the left shoulder, just above the collar bone, making
a painful wound. Carter’s intrepid courage was not dashed by his wound,
and he instantly returned the fire.
Rube, for the first time in all his career of crime, was called to
stand and fight. He had “held the drop” on many a field of rencontre,
but here was an even gauge of battle, with the _qui vive_ as the
vantage ground for him.
Carter boldly advanced upon the outlaw, and, with steady nerve, pressed
the trigger of his faithful revolver, but Rube backed away after the
first shot from Carter’s pistol, and continued backing and firing until
he had retreated some thirty paces, and until he himself had fired five
shots. Just as Carter fired his fourth round, Rube turned, and running
some ten paces, leaped a few feet in the air and fell prostrate upon
the earth, stone dead.
After falling upon his knees, from loss of blood, Carter managed to
fire a fifth shot. The fourth shot from Carter’s pistol, however,
had entered the upper abdomen, and cutting the portal artery, caused
instant death. This was the only shot that hit Rube.
McDuffie and Marshal, meantime, by means of a duplicate key, had
liberated themselves, and had visited several places in the town in
the endeavor to secure fire-arms with which to recapture Rube. Being
unsuccessful, they reached the store just as the duel was ended.
Rube had given to Jesse the fateful sack as they started from the jail,
and while the duel between Carter and Rube was in progress Jesse
opened the sack, drew out a pistol, and rushing to Carter’s assistance,
commenced firing.
“Stand up to him, Mr. Carter; I’m gwine to be wid you,” said the
heroic Jesse. He fired two shots, without effect, however, and was the
first man to reach the dead outlaw and take from his hand his smoking
revolver. All honor to Jesse Hildreth. He has written his name in the
annals of his race and times as a hero.
Rube’s conduct in seeking out Carter and demanding his rifle and money
has been reckoned as foolhardy. The truth is, however, that McDuffie
had recited to him the details of the chase, and Rube knew that the
detectives of the Southern Express Company were within a few miles, and
that under their guidance armed possees were scouring the country in
search of him. He had been told that the ferry landings were guarded,
and that if his arrest had not been effected in the cabin he would have
been captured on his arrival at the river landing for which he was _en
route_.
Rube knew that blood-hounds were in leash, ready to be set upon his
trail, and that it would be impossible to escape without his Marlin
rifle, which was in Carter’s possession. With this weapon, which
chambered sixteen cartridges, he could have held a dozen men at bay,
and perhaps might have effected his escape. His attempt to regain
possession of it, therefore, was not foolhardy, but it was a _dernier_
resort.
[Illustration: JEFFERSON D. CARTER.]
Jefferson Davis Carter, who fought the duel unto death with the great
outlaw, was named in honor of the President of the Confederacy.
His ancestors, who moved from South Carolina to Alabama in 1832,
distinguished themselves as soldiers both during the American
Revolution and the late civil war. Young Carter was born in 1860, is
unmarried, and is a prosperous merchant in the village of Myrtlewood,
Ala. He is quiet and modest in his demeanor, and his encounter with
Rube Burrow is the only time he was ever engaged in serious combat.
A very general interest has been manifested as to the condition of
Carter’s wound, and universal sympathy has been expressed in his
behalf. He is now under surgical treatment at Mobile, and will remain
there for some time. The ball from Burrow’s pistol, a forty-five
caliber, pierced the upper part of the shoulder, passing through the
brachial plexus of nerves, and complete paralysis of the left arm has
followed. It is possible that under careful antiseptic treatment the
functions of the nerves may be restored, and the use of the arm fully
regained. His general health has been restored, but he still carries
his wounded arm supported by a bandage.
In a letter dated October 18th, 1890, Governor Seay, of Alabama, in
tendering his congratulations to the officials of the Southern Express
Company, writes:
“The running at large of the outlaw was a menace not only to the
State but to this entire section of the country, and the ending of
his career of crime is cause for congratulation to us all. Much
as we would have preferred, by the regular course of law, to have
marked a more ignominious end, his hardiness, his readiness and his
desperation prevented this, but leaves to us the very satisfactory
reflection that there was found in the lawful paths of life the
courage, the presence of mind and the constancy which surpassed
that of the outlaw himself.”
J. D. Carter’s name stands enrolled on the list of honor as the finest
type of American courage and manhood exhibited in modern times.
Brave John McDuffie--what shall be said of him and of his discomfiture
at being outwitted by his wily captive? McDuffie said to the express
official, on his arrival at Linden, with whom he had talked through the
telephone the previous night:
“I can not look you in the face, after all the caution you gave me last
night.”
Taking his hand and pressing it warmly, the official said:
“Be of good cheer, McDuffie. Napoleon made a mistake at Waterloo, Lee
made a mistake at Gettysburg, and the heroic Custer made one when he
rode down to death in the valley of the Big Horn. Greater men have made
greater mistakes on greater occasions, and but for you the chase would
not be over and the battle won. ‘All is well that ends well.’”
McDuffie had joined Detective Jackson on the afternoon of October 2d.
From that hour he had been to the fore, riding night and day in the
arduous chase that followed. Worn and fagged with the toils of the
pursuit, he was perhaps less watchful than otherwise he would have
been. _Humanus est errare._
A coroner’s inquest was held, and the body of Rube Burrow being
thoroughly identified a verdict of death in the manner described was
rendered. After treating the body with preservatives it was taken to
Demopolis, Ala. Here hundreds of people assembled to view the remains
of the great bandit.
On arrival at Birmingham, at three o’clock on the morning of the 9th
of October, fully one thousand people were in waiting to get a glimpse
at the body of the great train robber. Special officers were employed
to keep the morbid crowd at bay. Photographs of the body were taken,
and at seven o’clock A. M. the train leaving Birmingham for Memphis
conveyed the remains to Sulligent, Ala. A telegram had been sent to
Allen Burrow, stating that Rube’s dead body would be delivered to him
at noon that day at Sulligent. The father was there to receive it. A
representative of the Southern Express Company said to him:
“We are sorry to bring your boy back in this shape, but it was the best
we could do.”
“I have no doubt,” answered Allen Burrow, “that he was mobbed.”
This sentiment was diffused among the friends of the outlaw, and
finally found culmination in a sensational letter written from Vernon,
Ala., and published in the Birmingham _Age-Herald_. The publication
asserted that Rube had been mobbed, his neck horribly broken and his
body shamefully mutilated. All this, despite the fact that the body had
been viewed by newspaper correspondents at Demopolis and Birmingham,
and by at least five thousand persons before it reached Sulligent.
The body and face bore no marks of mutilation and no wound of any
description, save the small bullet hole from Carter’s pistol.
The remains of the most famous bandit of modern times were buried among
the hills of Lamar County, in the quiet graveyard of Fellowship Church,
on the morning of the 10th of October, 1890, on the very spot where,
a year before, he had enlisted Rube Smith as a member of his unlawful
band--a strange coincidence, surely.
The train robber’s pistols, belt and Marlin rifle were taken to
Memphis, Tenn., and the publication of the chase and capture by a
Memphis journal, accompanied by illustrations of the pistols and
cartridge belt, and the announcement that the arms would be on
exhibition at its office that morning, created a remarkable and
unexpected effect. The rush of visitors that ensued was extraordinary,
and is mentioned here merely to show the wonderful interest with which
the career of Rube Burrow imbued all classes of people. Early in
the morning the first callers were the newsboys, porters and clerks.
All wanted to see and handle the weapons of the great outlaw. Later,
merchants, bankers, lawyers, shop-keepers, all alike interested, left
their places of business to view the weapons. It became necessary to
place the pistols and belt in a glass case and hang the rifle beyond
reach, and still the crowd continued to gather.
The weapons were on exhibition for several days, during all of which
time the influx of visitors never ceased. Rich and poor, male and
female, black and white, all were possessed of the same curiosity, and
the deeds of the outlaw were discussed by some with admiration for his
courage, by others with an expression of detestation of his crimes--by
all with a feeling of relief that he was dead.
CHAPTER XXI.
TRAGIC SUICIDE OF L. C. BROCK, ALIAS JOE JACKSON--HE LEAPS FROM THE
FOURTH STORY OF THE PRISON INTO THE OPEN COURT, SIXTY FEET BELOW,
CAUSING INSTANT DEATH--HIS LAST STATEMENT.
L. C. Brock, _alias_ Joe Jackson, was placed in the penitentiary at
Jackson, Miss., for safe keeping, on the twenty-first day of July,
pending his appearance for trial at the November Term of the Federal
Court. He had elected to plead guilty, and receive a sentence of life
imprisonment for the offense of robbing the United States mail at
Buckatunna, Miss., September 25, 1889, rather than be taken to Duck
Hill, because the penalty of death by hanging he knew would be his
fate. Again, he felt that the outraged friends of Chester Hughes, the
heroic passenger who had, in assisting Conductor Wilkinson on that
fateful night, been shot down in cold blood, would probably mob him
if taken there for trial, and fearless and bold as he was, his heart
quaked within him whenever the alternative of being taken to Duck
Hill was presented to him. Again and again he had been told by the
officials of the Southern Express Company that whenever he repented of
the conclusion he had made to plead guilty to the Buckatunna robbery
and testify against Smith, that the confession he had made could be
withdrawn, and he could elect a trial for the murder at Duck Hill.
Meantime Rube Smith, unaware that Brock had made a confession, had
notified the officials of the Express Company that he would turn
state’s evidence against Brock, provided a _nolle pros._ could be
entered in his case in the Federal Court. Rube Smith’s proposition
was, however, rejected, but Brock was told of Smith’s offer to testify
against him, and thus he found the coils tightening, day by day, about
him. On August 22d Brock, under the assumed name of Winslow, the name
he at first gave when captured, wrote the following letter to his
uncle, at Pleasant Hill, La.
JACKSON, MISS., August 22, 1890.
_J. T. Harrell, Pleasant Hill, La._
Dearest ----:
I wrote to you some time ago, but as you neither come nor wrote I
will write again. I have some very important business, would like
to have you attend to and if you will come I will pay your expences
and pay you any price beside. the business I want you to do for me
is to sell my land. I do not think it will be any trouble to sell
it for the cash. if you can come please come soon. if not write and
let me know if you will come. remember I will pay you well besids
expences. I am very anxious to see you as I wrote you before if you
come come to the penitentiary and call for J. B. Winslow or if you
do not come address letter to J. B. Winslow, care M. L. Jenkins,
Jackson, Miss. My health is very bad. Guess it will puzzle you to
read this, am writing on my knee, not even a book to lay my paper
on. I will not put my right name to this. I am sure you will know
the writing anyhow. So I will close, hoping to see you soon.
Respectfully &c.
J. B. WINSLOW.
N. B. Be sure to come and come in a very few days. I want my land
sold now rite away and I will pay you a hansome price to go and
make the trade for me. Come as soon as you get this.
Goodbye, Your friend.
Mr. Harrell called on his nephew, Brock, about September 1st,
succeeding the date of his letter, and for the first time learned that
his nephew was charged with murder and train robbery. He had no idea
who J. B. Winslow was until he met his nephew face to face, within
the walls of the state-prison. The scene was an affecting one. The
conversation between the two occurred in the presence of Sergeant
Montgomery, of the prison. Brock made no effort to secure counsel, or
to summon any witnesses, but merely expressed a desire to have his
uncle sell his land, a tract of two hundred acres owned by him in
Coffee County, Ala., and turn the proceeds over to his mother.
On the 16th of October, by appointment, the U. S. District Attorney,
A. M. Lea, Col. J. H. Neville, Special Counsel employed by the
Government to assist in the trial, and the express officials, who were
familiar with the facts, all met at Jackson, Miss., to arrange for the
approaching trial of L. C. Brock and Rube Smith. All of these gentlemen
called in company upon Brock, in his cell at the penitentiary, and
District Attorney Lea told Brock if he had any witnesses he desired
summoned he would have subpœnas issued, and that he was free to choose
as to whether he would plead guilty or employ counsel. Brock then and
there reiterated his determination to plead guilty, so frequently made
prior to that time to the author, and said he had no money, and did not
intend to employ any counsel. He said he was willing to testify against
Smith, but remarked:
“What will people think of me for doing that--see how the world looks
upon Bob Ford?”
When told that all fair-minded and Christian people would applaud him
for standing on the side of honesty and truth, he added:
“Well, the Bible does not give Judas Iscariot a very fair name.”
And so it was easily discovered that the ill-fated criminal was
battling against opposing ideas. On the one hand he was confronted with
the certainty of conviction and an ignominious death at the hands of
the hangman, on the other life imprisonment, with the added alternative
of standing as a witness against his copartner in crime and assisting
to fasten guilt upon him. He had often said:
“I prefer death to imprisonment for life, for what is life without
liberty.”
On Saturday, the 8th of November, two days before his suicide, he said
to a fellow prisoner, whose hat was worn and old:
“You need a new hat; you may have mine Monday.”
Brock had evidently made up his mind, as indicated by these remarks, to
take his own life. About nine o’clock on the morning of November 10,
1890, the day set for his trial, Detective Thomas Jackson and United
States Marshal Mathews went to the penitentiary building to bring the
prisoner to the Federal Court, as he had been notified would be done.
Sergeant Montgomery sent the officer of the prison charged with the
special surveillance of Brock to bring him into his office, where the
detective and marshal awaited him. At night he was confined in one
of the cells on the ground floor of the prison, but was permitted to
occupy during the day one of the guard rooms situated on the third
floor of the building. The prisoner was in this room when the keeper
went after him to bring him to the sergeant’s office. Just as the
keeper was in the act of unlocking the door, Brock walked to the iron
barred window of the room, and beckoning to a fellow convict standing
in the yard of the prison, threw out of the window the following note:
NOVEMBER 10th, 1890.
To all who may read this, I write this to inform you that my name
is L. C. Brock; was born and raised in Coffee county, southeast
Ala. and I am not guilty of the crime for which I am imprisoned. I
am innocent, the God of Heaven knows it. I have suffered all the
while for the crime of some one else. On the 29th of September I
wrote to L. B. Moseley, Deputy U. S. Marshal, Jackson Miss. to
come and get the names of my witnesses. he has not come yet. I do
not believe the letter was mailed to him at all. through August I
had fever and nothing to lay on up stairs (daytime) but the floor,
fainted 25 or 35 times from weakness. I am telling this to show or
give you an idea of how I have been treated. They entend to force
me to a trial without my witnesses. You show this to any and all if
you wish.
Respectfully,
L. C. BROCK.
The officer, unlocking the room door, announced that he had come to
take him to the sergeant’s office, where the marshal and Detective
Jackson were in waiting to take him to the courtroom. “All right,” said
Brock, and immediately followed the officer out.
The penitentiary cells are four deep, one above the other, around a
large corridor, eighty feet long, making an open court sixty feet deep.
When the prisoner reached the head of the stair-way, in front of the
door of his room, instead of descending with the officer he turned
down the hall-way and commenced to ascend the stair-way leading to the
fourth floor. At the same time he drew a murderous looking knife, which
he had secured and secreted in some unaccountable manner, and bade
the guard stand back or he would cut him. Sergeant Montgomery was at
once notified of the unusual conduct of the prisoner, and, in company
with Detective Jackson and Marshal Mathews, immediately repaired to
the rotunda of the court and inquired of the prisoner what he meant
by such conduct. Brock was then calmly walking to and fro along the
floor of the fourth story brandishing his knife, and at once declared
his intention to jump to the ground beneath and kill himself. Meantime
the note thrown from the window had been handed to the officers of the
prison, and Brock was asked to name the party to whom he had given
letters, asking that witnesses be summoned. This he refused to do, but
stated that the Southern Express Company intended to “railroad” him
either to the gallows or to life imprisonment without giving him even
the shadow of a showing, whereupon Marshal Mathews assured him that
he should not go to trial without counsel, and further stated that he
would see that all the witnesses he desired should be summoned.
Brock refused to come down, and, despite the assurances and entreaties
of the officers, continued to repeat his intention to take the fatal
leap. The stern and determined expression upon the desperate man’s
face, his cool and collected demeanor, convinced all who saw and heard
him that an awful tragedy would soon be enacted.
At this juncture the prisoner placed a table near the balcony railing,
mounted it, declared he was alone and friendless in the world, and
preferred death to life imprisonment. He asked that his uncle, Mr.
Harrell--then at Jackson, although the prisoner did not know it--be
telegraphed the information of his death, and that his body be sent to
his mother.
Sergeant Montgomery, meantime, had conceived the idea of climbing the
latticed walls of the court, and while the other officers diverted
his attention, would reach the fourth story, directly under him, and
overturn the table, and before the prisoner could regain his footing
he would pinion him and prevent his suicide. Divesting himself of coat
and hat, the Sergeant climbed as far as the third story, when he was
prevailed upon not to risk his life in such a hazardous feat, as the
prisoner would undoubtedly knife him before he could carry out his
project. He then came down.
The officers vied with each other in appealing to the prisoner’s
manhood, and entreating him to forego the fatal project. Finally
Detective Jackson and Marshal Mathews noiselessly went up the stair-way
until they stood on the landing just behind and about six feet from the
prisoner, urging him all the while to put away his knife and come down
stairs. Detective Jackson, approaching within three or four feet of the
prisoner, said:
“Joe, you are not going to jump, are you?”
“Yes, I am,” replied the prisoner, and stepping from the table to the
railing, he sprang head foremost into the awful space. Vaulting over
and over in his rapid flight to the stone-covered corridor, sixty feet
below, he fell, crushed and bleeding, with a sound that reverberated
through the long tiers of cells, from which the gaping eyes of his
fellow prisoners looked, in speechless horror, upon a tragedy so
appalling as to make strong men shudder and turn pale. The unfortunate
victim of his own desperation lingered for about one hour, unconscious,
his body writhing in horrible contortions until death ensued. He was
buried in the prison cemetery at Jackson at five o’clock on the evening
of his death.
The author, having repeatedly visited Brock while confined at Jackson,
takes pleasure in acquitting the officers of the State penitentiary of
any maltreatment of the prisoner.
The prisoner made no attempt to secure witnesses; in fact, repeatedly
stated he had none. The statement written and thrown from the window,
is, therefore, not entitled to credit. A few minutes before his suicide
he freely confessed to having received fair treatment at the hands of
the prison officials.
The following lines were found on his person after death, indicating
that the bold outlaw, in his hours of retrospection, had garnered the
bitter fruitage of despair and remorse so aptly depicted:
“How wise we are when the chance is gone,
And a glance we backward cast.
We know just the thing we should have done
When the time for doing is past.”
CHAPTER XXII.
RUBE SMITH’S TRIAL FOR THE BUCKATUNNA MAIL ROBBERY--AN UNSUCCESSFUL
ALIBI--PERJURED WITNESSES--MASTERLY SPEECHES--CONVICTION AND
SENTENCE.
The tragic and appalling death of L. C. Brock, _alias_ Joe Jackson,
while it spread consternation among his fellow prisoners and disturbed
somewhat the serenity of the Court, did not impede the course of
justice. The trial of Rube Smith for the Buckatunna mail robbery was
proceeded with in the Federal Court, Judge R. A. Hill presiding, as
though nothing had occurred. It was of but little importance to the
defendant whether he should be tried at that time or later. He had
already been convicted in the State Court for the express robbery and
sentenced to imprisonment for ten years.
His defense was conducted in a skillful and able manner by Colonel
John A. Blair, of Tupelo, Miss. The Government was represented by
Captain A. M. Lea, United States District Attorney, who made a masterly
presentation of the case in behalf of the prosecution. Captain Lea was
assisted by Col. J. H. Neville, the brilliant Prosecuting Attorney
for the Second Judicial District of Mississippi. Col. Neville had
successfully conducted the prosecution for the express robbery, and
had, on account of his familiarity with the facts and his recognized
ability, been employed by the Department of Justice to assist in the
prosecution.
The _corpus delicti_ was proved by the introduction of the conductor,
engineer, express messenger and the railway mail agent. Neil
McAllister, a very sensible colored man, in whose cabin the robbers
spent two days immediately preceding the occurrence, identified Rube
Smith as one of the men who had occupied his cabin, and disappeared
on the morning of the robbery. W. D. Cochran, an intelligent farmer
of the vicinity, also identified Smith as being in that locality two
days before the train was robbed. McClung’s testimony, reciting all
the details of the robbery as given him by Smith, was corroborated by
the engineer and other train employes. The letters written by Smith,
his proposition to become a witness for the prosecution against Brock,
which was declined, all formed links in the chain of testimony against
him which the skill and ability of defendant’s counsel could not weaken
or break. The father of the prisoner testified that his son had slept
at his home in Lamar County on the night of the Buckatunna robbery.
James Barker and Jasper Smith, the former an uncle by marriage, and the
latter a first cousin of the defendant, both testified unscrupulously
and recklessly in support of the _alibi_ sought to be established.
As a fitting climax to the trial, otherwise famous as it had been
rendered by the tragic events that had so closely preceded it, James
Barker and Jasper Smith were arrested for perjury immediately on
leaving the witness stand. The Grand Jury being in session they were
indicted at once, and finding that any defense would be useless, both
entered a plea of guilty. James Barker was sentenced to three years’
and Jasper Smith to two years’ imprisonment at hard labor at Detroit.
Consequent upon the arrest of the defendant’s witnesses for perjury
originated a good story on Colonel Blair. Jim McClung, Smith’s pal, had
been confined in default of bond in the jail at Jackson as a witness.
When James Barker and Jasper Smith were arrested they sent for Colonel
Blair, who went to the jail to visit them. On entering, Colonel Blair
found Jim McClung playing a game of solitaire in the hall of the jail.
Jim is wholly illiterate, but was possessed of a good deal of droll
wit that made him an entertaining witness. The following conversation
ensued between Colonel Blair and Jim McClung:
_Col. B._--“Good morning, Jim. How are you this morning?”
_Jim McC._--“Only tolerbul, Colonel--not feelin’ very well. How are
you?”
_Col. B._--“First rate, Jim, but I am not surprised that you are not
feeling very well. I don’t see how a man can feel very well who has
(alluding to his testimony against Smith) put his friend in prison, as
you have done.”
_Jim McC._--“Well, now, Colonel, look here. Before you come into this
case there warn’t but one of my friends in prison, and now you have
been a foolin’ with the case sence last spring and you’ve got three of
’em in. How is that? Eh?”
The joke was on the gifted and brilliant attorney. He had been
powerless to stem the tide which swept his client and witnesses alike
into the prisoner’s cell.
On the eighteenth day of November, 1890, Rube Smith was brought before
the bar of the Court by the marshal, and asked by the venerable
Judge presiding if he had anything to say as to why the judgment of
the law should not be pronounced upon him for the crime of which he
stood convicted. The prisoner replied he had nothing further to say,
whereupon Judge Hill addressed him as follows:
“Mr. Reuben Smith, the crime of which you stand convicted, and for
which it becomes my duty as presiding Judge of the Court to pronounce
against you the penalty of the law, which is confinement at hard labor
in the penitentiary for the remainder of your natural life, is that of
forcibly and violently robbing the United States mail. This crime is
the highest crime known to the law of the United States, save that
of murder and treason, and is punished with the severest penalty save
that of death. The reason therefor is that the robber usually engages
in robbery with the determination to murder his victims if necessary to
carry out his purpose.
“It is sad to behold a young man like yourself, who, by an upright
and virtuous life, might have been an honorable and useful citizen,
enjoying the blessings of the most refined and elevated society,
banished, as it were, from all that renders life desirable. The evil
consequences of your crime are not confined to yourself. For to save
you from the punishment of your offense no less than five of your
family and friends have perjured themselves to establish an _alibi_ in
your behalf, for which offense two of them have already pleaded guilty
and are condemned to serve terms at hard labor in the penitentiary--a
punishment the more serious in its consequences because not confined to
themselves alone, but to their helpless families and children as well.
“Sad as these consequences are, you may, and it is your duty, to repent
of your offense against the laws of the State and the Nation, and
against your Maker, your family, and your own well-being, and commence
a new life by obeying strictly all the laws of God and man, and
especially the regulations of the prison in which you will be confined.
If you do this, in the course of time the President may grant you a
pardon; but whether this is granted or not, your best interest is to
obey whatever may be required of you, and also to employ all of the
means that may be offered you to improve your mind and your morals, and
to make preparations for the final judgment.
“I feel assured that if you conduct yourself properly you will be not
only treated well, clothed and fed well, but will receive as kind
treatment as the circumstances will permit.
“Will you promise me that you will follow this advice? (The prisoner
replied in a subdued tone, “I will follow your advice.”)
“The judgment of the Court and of the law is, that for the offense
for which you stand convicted you be delivered to the warden of the
penitentiary of the State of Ohio, at Columbus, and be there imprisoned
at hard labor for and during your natural life.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONCLUSION.
“_An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told_.”
If the reader has been disappointed in the fact that the hero of this
narrative has not been vested with the glamour of princely wealth; that
he has not been painted a knight-errant of more romantic type; and
that a champion in the field of pillage and plunder should not wear
golden spurs and a helmet of brass, the fault lies not with the author,
but rather with the popular error which pre-supposes these fallacious
results.
The stereotyped question of all interested in his career has been,
“What did Rube Burrow do with his money?”
The accuracy of the statement is vouched for, that in all of the
eight train robberies, from Ben Brook, Texas, to Flomaton, Ala.,
reckoning his share as equal with that of his companions in crime, Rube
Burrow secured not exceeding _five thousand five hundred dollars_.
He invested, in the spring of 1887, about four hundred dollars by
purchasing a one-half interest, with his brother, in a few acres of
land in Texas. Soon after the Genoa robbery he purchased for sixteen
hundred dollars the farm on which his father now resides in Lamar
County, paying four hundred dollars cash and giving his note for
twelve hundred dollars. A few weeks after the Buckatunna robbery this
note, through his father, was paid, some of the currency used being
subsequently identified as part of that stolen at Buckatunna. The
residue, the pitiful sum of three thousand five hundred dollars, was
spent in the vain endeavor to avoid the ceaseless pursuit organized
against him, and which made the latter years of his life an intolerable
burden.
In the autumn of 1889 Rube Burrow made, through one of his kinsmen, a
proposition to the officers of the Southern Express to surrender, upon
the condition that he would not be tried for the murder of Hughes or
Graves. The proposition was, of course, promptly declined.
L. C. Brock, _alias_ Joe Jackson, stated, after his arrest, that he
had at one time made up his mind to seek an interview with Detective
Jackson, with a view of making some conditions for his own surrender,
but Rube’s proposition having been declined he gave up the project.
Although lawless by instinct, training and ambition, these men had
drunk the bitter cup of crime to the dregs, and longed, no doubt, to
enfranchise themselves from the toils that beset them, and which, like
an avenging Nemesis, pursued them to the end.
The Southern Express Company expended, independently of all rewards,
about twenty thousand dollars in the hunting down of this band of train
robbers. The total rewards offered for Rube Burrow amounted to about
$3,500. The rewards of $1,000 by the United States Government, and
$250 by the State of Mississippi, have been, so far, withheld, because
the language of the statutes, both Federal and State, under which the
rewards were offered, required conviction in the courts.
Inspector A. G. Sharp, of the United States Postal Service, who has
been very zealous in urging that the rewards offered by the Government
be paid, writes under date of December 17, 1890, as follows:
“While in Washington recently, I laid the matter of reward for Rube
Burrow and Joe Jackson before the Postmaster-General and the Chief
Inspector, and strongly urged that the rewards for both be paid,
and the question of conviction be waived. I believe the claims
to be just, and that good policy suggests prompt payment. I feel
satisfied that the Postmaster-General will accept my advice in
the matter, and that the rewards for both will be paid in full.
Of this, however, I can not speak positively; but from the reply
made by the Postmaster-General, to my earnest solicitation, I feel
justified in saying that I have strong reasons for believing that
he will make the order allowing the rewards.”
All other rewards for Rube Burrow have been paid to Carter and his
associates. The rewards for Brock and Smith, excepting those offered by
the Government and the State of Mississippi, have also been paid to the
parties interested.
William Brock, of Texas, was in nowise related to L. C. Brock. The two
men never met, and that two of Burrow’s clansmen bore the same name was
merely a coincidence.
The question recurs, “Does train-robbing pay?”
Here were men whose untoward inclinings, fostered by evil association,
inflamed them with a passion for lawlessness. Their brawny arms were
uplifted against the laws of God and man for ambition’s sake. They
loved pillage for booty’s sake.
Behold the hapless fate of the five men who linked their fortunes
together, commencing with the date of the Genoa robbery in December,
1887. William Brock, although sentenced to a short term of
imprisonment, will carry to his grave the stigma of an ex-convict. Rube
Smith has entered the gloomy portals of a prison, in which he is doomed
to spend the remaining days of his life--a fate more horrible than
death.
Rube Burrow, Jim Burrow and L. C. Brock lie in unhallowed graves, their
memories kept alive only by the recollection of their atrocious deeds,
leaving their kindred and friends to realize the bitter truth that
“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”
Verily, “the way of the transgressor is hard”--“for whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Misspellings and poor punctuation in some letters have been retained.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train robbers : An accurate and faithful history of their exploits and adventures" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.