STATEMENT OF ENGINEER THERRILL.
Just as I was pulling out of Buckatunna I heard a voice on my engine, and I thought the fireman was speaking to me. I turned to find the fireman and myself covered with pistols by two men. The larger of the two men, who had his pistol presented at me, said, “Pull on out!” After I had run several hundred yards he said, “Don’t be uneasy.” I told him I was not uneasy. He said: “I am going to rob this train or kill every man on it. Stop the train on the trestle beyond the bridge, so the passengers can’t get off. I will kill every one that hits the ground.” I stopped as directed, and was ordered to get down from the engine. When I got down, there was a man standing opposite the gangway on the ground, whom I will designate as number three. He backed towards the express car door. The man number one, who had been on the engine, said, “Call the express messenger.” Just then robber number three, who was in front, covered the messenger, who was sitting on the opposite side of the car, with his back toward us.
The conductor came out at this moment and asked what was the matter. The big man, number one, then fired a shot over my head towards the conductor and said, “Get back or I will kill you!” The messenger had not yet opened the door, but was covered by the pistol of number three. The big man, number one, then covered the messenger as soon as he had shot. The fireman was standing behind me, with a coal pick, covered by number two, who had been on the engine. The messenger shoved the grated door back, the wooden or outside door being already open. The messenger could not have stepped aside, as he was covered by two pistols. Number one then said, “Give me your hand and pull me in the car. Handle my hand carefully, as there are corns on it.” He was in the car five or six minutes. Just after he got in the car the conductor again called to know what was the matter. Number three said, in a low tone of voice, “Look out, I will settle him.” He went forward a few paces, called out “Come and see,” squatted and fired one shot. He then got up, ran forward about ten feet, and laid down flat on his stomach. He laid there until number one, in the car, told the messenger to get out of the car, which he did, in front of the robber, who gave him the bag with its contents to hold, while he himself got out.
Number one then said to me, “Go to the engine with me and pull the mail car off the trestle.” I told him it was off, and told him if it was not off I did not have steam enough to move the train. He then said to number two, “Take the fireman to the engine,” and added, “Wait, I will go with you.” He told the fireman to get on the engine, and told me to stay on the ground. He told the fireman to get his fire started, ordered number two to stay with the fireman, and instructed me to go with him to the mail car. He told the fireman, before he started off, not to move the engine until he came back, and said he would kill me if it started. I went back to the mail car as instructed, and when we got to the express car he instructed number three to bring the messenger up to the mail car. Number three took the bag from the messenger as soon as he struck the ground. I called the mail agent, as instructed, who was inside of the car. As soon as he appeared he was covered by number one, who ordered me to go into the mail car ahead of him, which I did. He ordered the mail agent to get up his registered letters, and said to him, “You have been hiding them.”
The mail agent replied, “No, I have only turned the light down.” The mail agent showed him the registered mail, saying, “There it is,” and added, “You are doing the worst thing you ever did in your life. You will get the U. S. Government after you, and there are not $20,000 in the pile.” “That don’t make any difference,” said the robber; “I will take them anyhow.” He left the car and said to the mail agent, “If you don’t want to get hurt, shut the door and keep it shut until the train leaves here.” He gave the packages he got out of the mail car to number two, who was guarding the fireman, and told me to get up on my engine and pull out. I had started up on the engine when he told me to sit in the gangway between the tender and engine. Number one then said: “Do anything you want to get steam up.”
We were there ten minutes getting up steam. During that time he said he worked on a section once—though not on this road—and was discharged and a negro put in his place. He then decided not to work any more for a living. He said he had been around towns and had heard people say what they would do if they were “held up.” “What can a man do,” I asked, “in the fix you have me in?” “Do as I tell you.” he replied.
When I got steam up he said, “Hurry up to State Line, and send a message up and down the road, so they can get after us. Tell the operator I say to hurry up about it. Tell the boss of those cars (meaning the express cars) to put steps on them, or I will stop robbing them. Don’t ring the bell or blow the whistle,” he concluded, “or I will shoot into the engine.”
He told me, going down to the bridge, that he came here to rob this train because there was a boast in the papers last spring that he could not rob it, and he just wanted to show them what he could do.
The other two men, while we were talking at the engine, had gone out in the bushes. While going to the engine with me he told number three to put the messenger back in his car. When I got on the engine to start he said, “Holler to those boys on the other side, and tell them to get back from the train.” I thought he referred to his men, but saw none. In coming down from the station he said he had men and tools to do the job with.
* * * * *
The man described by Engineer Therrill as number one is easily recognized as Rube Burrow, number two as Joe Jackson, and number three as Rube Smith. The trestle at which the robbery was committed was undergoing repair by a force of bridge men, and the train was in the habit of stopping and then proceeding slowly across it. When the train stopped, therefore, Messenger Dunning supposed it was on account of the bad condition of the trestle, and gave little thought to the matter. When hailed by the engineer, who had been instructed by the robbers to call him to the door, the messenger found himself, on facing about, covered by revolvers through the grated or iron barred door of the car, the outer wooden door being open.
“Hold your hands down, and come to the door, or I will kill you,” said Burrow.
A shot from the pistol of one of the robbers on the outside of the car gave emphasis to the highwayman’s request, and when the grated door was pushed back, as ordered by Rube Burrow, he got in the car and, handing a sack to the messenger, said: “Put your money in there. Hurry up! I have no time to lose.”
Securing $2,685 from the express car, Burrow then went to the mail car and called for the registered mail. Mail Agent Bell had been collecting the registered matter, preparatory to leaving the car with it, when Rube entered and demanded it.
The registered mail, which contained $795, was taken, making the total amount secured $3,480, or $1,160 each.
In stopping the train the passenger coaches had been left on the trestle so as to prevent any one reaching the ground, twenty feet below, and making an attack from that quarter. The shots fired soon after the train was halted, two of which took effect in the steps of the coach on which Conductor Scholes stood, silenced further inquiry, and the work was completed without molestation.
When Burrow joined his comrades, after leaving the mail car, he seemed anxious to have the train start. During the run from the station down to the trestle he had forbidden the fireman to put any coal in the fire-box, and, hence while the train was being robbed so much steam was lost that it was ten minutes after the robbery was over before sufficient steam was obtained to get under headway. Finally the train resumed its onward course, and Burrow, sending a few parting shots of humor after Engineer Therrill, joined his comrades who were anxiously awaiting his coming in the brush a few yards distant.
The train dispatcher’s record of that day bore the simple explanation: “Number five delayed thirty minutes at Buckatunna trestle, getting robbed.”
The news of the robbery brought the officials of the Express and Railroad Companies by special train to the scene. Possees were at once organized and sent in pursuit. It was evident that the work was that of Rube Burrow. “I will rob this train or kill every man on it” was the identical expression used at Genoa and at Duck Hill. His disposition to be humorous—in fact, every detail of the robbery gave evidence of his identity as the leader.
The robbers were traced from the scene of their crime in an easterly course. Blood-hounds were used in the pursuit, but the trail being cold they were abandoned. The detectives, however, quietly took up the trail and followed it towards Demopolis, Ala. At this point it was found that Rube Smith separated from the other men about October 5th, and went by rail into Lamar County. Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson continued their journey afoot, and traveling by easy stages reached Lamar County on the night of October 23d, impelled by some strange fancy to return to the spot from which they had been so recently routed, and from which they were soon to depart again.
DETECTIVE T. V. JACKSON.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CAPTURE OF RUBE SMITH AND JAMES M’CLUNG AT AMORY, MISS.—M’CLUNG’S CONFESSION—A PLAN TO ROB THE TRAIN FALLS THROUGH—A SAFE ROBBERY NIPPED IN THE BUD.
When the Buckatunna robbery of September 25, 1889, occurred, the fact that three men participated in that deed proved that a third man had joined Rube Burrow since his last robbery at Duck Hill, on December 15, 1888, and the identity of the third man puzzled the detectives of the Express Company for some weeks. An accurate description, however, of all three of the men had been obtained, and Detective Thomas Jackson, after a visit into Lamar County a few weeks after the robbery, became convinced that it was Rube Smith. On the eighth day of October, succeeding the Buckatunna robbery, Rube Smith appeared in Lamar County, exhibited a good deal of money, and was known to be in hiding in the vicinity of his father’s home. Here he remained for some weeks, narrowly escaping capture at the hands of Detective Thomas Jackson several times, while the latter was daily securing additional evidence of his complicity in the Buckatunna affair. Finally, in the latter part of November, 1889, Jim McClung, an old acquaintance of Rube Smith’s, left Itawamba County, Miss., to visit his relatives in Lamar County, and while en route thither fell in with Rube Smith near the house of that worthy’s father. Rube exhibited quite a sum of money to McClung, and invited him to accompany him to the Indian Territory, which McClung agreed to do. This was the hiding place to which Smith had gone soon after the Johnson robbery.
The two men left for the Indian Territory. Their destination was Kavanaugh, and Smith unfolded to McClung, while en route, the whole story of the Buckatunna train robbery and the part he played in it. He described every detail and circumstance of the robbery, and McClung, having a very retentive memory, was afterwards enabled to testify about it so minutely that the jury in the Federal Court, before which Smith had a mistrial in May, 1890, concluded that Jim McClung had participated in that robbery. Such, however, was not the fact.
The section of the Indian Territory to which Smith and McClung went was wild and sparsely settled, but no sooner had Smith appeared there than he learned that the officers were after him for a violation of the Federal law forbidding the importation and sale of intoxicating liquors in the Indian Territory, while he was there in the early spring. Smith therefore left within twenty-four hours after his arrival, and returned to Lamar County, abandoning a project of robbing the disbursing officer of an Indian agency near Kavanaugh, which he had unfolded to McClung.
McClung soon tired of life in the Indian Territory, and, returning to Alabama, found Smith in Lamar County. Here, on the 13th of December, Rube Smith conceived the idea of robbing the Southern Express car at Bigbee trestle, two miles north of Amory, Miss. The next night, soon after dark, he set out with McClung from the home of Rube Smith’s father for that purpose. How the plan fell through is best told by the confession of Jim McClung, after the capture of Smith and himself in the sitting-room of the depot at Amory, Miss.
At one o’clock A. M. Detective Thomas Jackson, assisted by local officers Clay and Aikin, of Amory, made the capture. McClung made but slight resistance, but Smith grappled with Jackson, despite the fact that he was covered by the revolvers of both Clay and Jackson, while Officer Aikin had McClung in charge, and a hand to hand struggle ensued, in which Smith succeeded in dragging his captors into the doorway of the station house, where he was finally overpowered and the handcuffs placed upon him. The prisoners were taken to the Aberdeen, Miss., jail, and on the 18th of December McClung made the following confession to the express officials, which confirmed the information already in their possession as to Smith’s complicity in the Buckatunna robbery.