Of course the telegraph soon started the hue and cry. Officers from Silver, Deming, and Lordsburg were soon on the ground, led by Harvey Whitehill, the famous old sheriff of Grant County. But of clue there was none. Naturally the station agent had come safely out of his trance, but with that absence of memory of what had happened characteristic of the hypnotized. The trail disappeared in the sands of the Miembres road. Shrewd old Harvey Whitehill was at his wits' end.
Many days passed in fruitless search. At last, riding one day across the plain at some distance from the line of flight north from Gage, Whitehill found a fragment of a Kansas newspaper. As soon as he saw it he remembered that a certain merchant of Silver came from the Kansas town where this paper was published. Hurrying back to Silver, Whitehill saw the merchant, who identified the paper and said that he undoubtedly was its only subscriber in Silver. Asked if he had given a copy to any one, he finally recalled that some time before, about the period of the robbery, he had wrapped in a piece this newspaper some provisions he had sold to a negro named Cleveland and a white man he did not know.
Here was the clue, and Whitehill was quick to follow it. Meeting a negro
on the street, he pretended to want to hire a cook. The negro had a job.
Well, did he not know some one else? By the way, where was George
Cleveland?
"Oh, boss, he done left de Gila dis week an' gone ober to Socorro," was the answer.
Two days later Whitehill found Cleveland in a Socorro restaurant, got the "drop" on him, told him his pals were arrested and had confessed that they were in the robbery, but that he, Cleveland, had killed Engineer Webster. This brought the whole story.
"'Foh God, boss, I nebber killed dat engineer. Mitch Lee done it, an' him an' Taggart an' Kit Joy, dey done lied to you outrageous."
Within a few days, caught singly, in ignorance of Cleveland's arrest, and taken completely by surprise, Joy, Taggart, and Lee were captured on the Gila and jailed, along with Cleveland, at Silver City, held to await the action of the next grand jury.
But strong walls did not a prison make adequate hold these men. Before many weeks passed, an escape was planned and executed. Two other prisoners, one a man wanted in Arizona, and the other a Mexican horse-thief, were allowed to participate in the outbreak.
Taken unawares, their guard was seized and bound with little difficulty. Quickly arming themselves in the jail office, these six desperate men dashed out of the jail and into a neighboring livery stable, seized horses, mounted, and rode madly out of town, firing at every one in sight. In Silver in those days no gentleman's trousers fitted comfortably without a pistol stuck in the waistband. Therefore, the flying desperadoes received as hot a fire as they sent. By this fire Cleveland's horse was killed before they got out of town, but one of his pals stopped and picked him up.
Instantly the town was in an uproar of excitement. Every one knew that the capture of these men meant a fight to the death. As usual in such emergencies, there were more talkers than fighters. Nevertheless, six men were in pursuit as soon as they could saddle and mount. The first to start was the driver of an express wagon, a man named Jackson, who cut his horse loose from the traces, mounted bareback, and flew out of town only a few hundred yards behind the prisoners. Six others, led by Charlie Shannon and La Fer, were not far behind Jackson. The men of this party were greatly surprised to find that a Boston boy of twenty, a tenderfoot lately come to town, who had scarcely ever ridden a horse or fired a rifle, was among their number, well mounted and armed—a man with a line of ancestry worth while, and himself a worthy survival of the best of it.