The matter of the horse proved more difficult. It had not been hired at any stable in Omaha or in Council Bluffs, across the Missouri River. Advertising and police calls brought out no private owner who had rented such a rig. Finally, however, the officers found a farmer living about twenty miles out of town who had sold a bay pony to a tall stranger several weeks before. Another man was found who had sold a second-hand buggy to a man of the same general description. At last the police began to realize that they were dealing with a criminal of genuine resourcefulness and foresight. The man had not blundered in any of the usual ways, and he had made the trail so confused that more than a week had passed before there were any positive indications as to his possible identity.
In the end several indications pointed in the same direction. It seemed highly probable that the kidnapper chieftain had been some one acquainted with the packing business and probably with the Cudahys. He was also familiar with the town. He was tall, had a commanding voice, was accompanied by a shorter man, who seemed to be older, but was still dominated by his companion. More important still, this chief of abductors was an experienced and clever criminal. He gave every evidence of knowing all the ropes. These specifications seemed to fit just one man whose name now began to be used on all sides—the thrice perilous and ill-reputed Pat Crowe.
It was recalled that this man had begun life as a butcher, been a trusted employee of the Cudahys ten years before, and had been dismissed for dishonesty. Subsequently he had turned his hand to crime, and achieved a startling reputation in the western United States as an intrepid bandit, train robber, and jail breaker, a handy man with a gun, a sure shot, and a desperate fellow in a corner. He had been in prison more than once, had lately made what seemed an effort at reform, knew Edward A. Cudahy well, and had sometimes received favors and gratuities from the rich man. He was, in short, exactly the man to fit all the requirements, and succeeding weeks and evidence only strengthened the suspicion against him. Crowe, though he had been seen in Omaha the day before the kidnapping, was nowhere to be discovered. Even this fact added to the general belief that he and none other had done the deed. In a short time the Cudahy kidnapping mystery resolved itself into a quest for this notorious fellow.
The alarm was spread throughout the United States and Canada, to the British Isles, and the Continental ports, and to Mexico and the Central American border and port cities, where it was believed the fugitive might make his appearance. But Crowe was not apprehended, and the quest soon settled down to its routine phases, with occasional lapses back into exciting alarms. Every little while the capture of Pat Crowe was reported, and on at least a dozen occasions men turned up with confessions and detailed descriptions of the kidnapping. These apparitions and alleged captures took place in such diffused spots as London, Singapore, Manila, Guayaquil, San Francisco, and various obscure towns in the United States and Canada. The genuine and authentic Pat Crowe, however, stoutly declined to be one of the captives or confessors, and so the hunt went on.
Wide World
~~ PAT CROWE ~~
Meantime Crowe’s confederate, an ex-brakeman on the Union Pacific Railroad, had been taken and brought to trial. His name was James Callahan, and there was then and is now no question about his connection with the affair. Nevertheless, at the end of his trial on April 29, 1901, Callahan was acquitted, and Judge Baker, the presiding tribune, excoriated the jury for neglect of duty, saying that never had evidence more clearly indicated guilt. Attempts to convict Callahan on other counts were no better starred, and he had finally to be released.
In the same year, 1901, word was received from Crowe through an attorney he had employed in an earlier difficulty. Crowe had sent this barrister a draft from Capetown, South Africa, in payment of an old debt. The much sought desperado had got through the lines to the Transvaal, joined the Boer forces, and had been fighting against the British. He had been twice wounded, decorated for distinguished courage, and was, according to his own statement, done with crime and living a different life—adventurous, but honest. So many canards had been exploded that Omaha refused to believe the story, albeit time proved it to be true.
At the height of the excitement, rewards of fifty-five thousand dollars had been offered for the capture and conviction of Pat Crowe, thirty thousand by Cudahy and twenty-five thousand by the city of Omaha. This huge price on the head of this wandering bad man had, of course, contributed to the feverish and half-worldwide interest in the case. Yet even these fat inducements accomplished nothing.