Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train robbers

by George W. Agee

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.

JIM BURROW.

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.