Soon, however, further news was received which could not be disputed, and which at once aroused fresh interest in the chase. On Tuesday the robbers, it seemed, had invited themselves to breakfast at the house of a German farmer. On Wednesday morning they had captured another farmer's hired man in the woods, and after binding him, extorting information from him, threatening [pg 58] to kill him, and finally swearing him to secrecy, had let him go. Believing that a bad promise was better broken than kept, he had immediately reported the incident to his employer, who hastened with the news to Mankato, whence the telegraph sent it everywhere. Excitement was at once renewed. The disbanded forces hurried back, and hundreds of fresh recruits joined in the chase. A thousand men were soon on the ground, and a new campaign was organized under the direction of Gen. Pope of Mankato. Again patrols and searching parties were sent out, and every possible avenue of escape was guarded night and day. But again the fugitives escaped, not so much by virtue of their own cunning as through favorable accidents and the inefficiency of the guards on duty. Part of them crossed the railroad bridge over the Blue Earth River during Wednesday night. Two others, mounted on a stolen horse, passed the picket-line near Lake Crystal on Thursday night. These last were challenged, fired upon, and probably wounded by a brave young fellow, named Richard Roberts, whose sleeping companions had left him to hold the pass alone. The horse threw his riders and ran away, and they escaped in the darkness to the adjacent field, one of them leaving his hat behind him.
THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK, NORTHFIELD, MINN. (1876).
The band had now divided, Pitts and the three Youngers forming one division, and the two Jameses the other. It is believed to have been the James brothers whom Roberts fired upon. Continuing their flight, they stole a fine span of grey, on which they mounted bareback. This capture was a most fortunate one for them, and enabled them to make rapid progress and to assume again the role of officers in pursuit of criminals. They had no difficulty in getting food and information from unsuspecting people, who found only too late how they had been imposed upon. The two men went almost due west during the next forty-eight hours, travelling day and night at the utmost practicable speed, and making eighty miles with scarcely a halt. On Sunday, September 17th, they crossed the Minnesota line into what is now South Dakota. That evening they took the liberty of exchanging their over-driven greys for a span of blacks, one of which proved to be blind in one eye and the other in both. Not finding these satisfactory, they exchanged them in turn, in the small hours of Monday morning, for another span of greys. They now turned southward; passed through Sioux Falls; exchanged salutations with the driver of the Yankton stage, and clothes with a Sioux City doctor; and quietly pursued their [pg 60] flight by a route and to a destination best known to themselves.
They had not been permitted to make this escape without interference. No sooner was it known that they had gone through the picket-line than scouts were sent out in every direction, to overtake or intercept them. The best men in the field took up the trail. The most comprehensive measures were adopted for their capture. But owing perhaps to the unexpected celerity of their movements, so different from the previous methods of the gang, and to unforeseen slips and miscalculations, they succeeded in eluding their pursuers, most of whom abandoned the chase at the Dakota line.
This episode had entirely diverted attention from the rest of the band, as it was not then known that a division had taken place; and when the two horsemen were finally lost track of, the general supposition was that the whole band had escaped. Some persons, indeed, believed that the four unaccounted for were still in the neighborhood in which they had last been seen. The disreputable house near Mankato, already referred to as the place where two of the robbers were known to have been on the night of September 3d, was searched, and many suspicious characters in [pg 61] various places were arrested and investigated. This vigilance resulted in securing some criminals, including two notorious horse-thieves, but it discovered no clue to the bank-robbers.
The mortification of the pursuers was intense; and the denunciations heaped upon some of them and the ridicule upon all was a bitter reward for their two weeks of hard service. The failure of their campaign could not be denied. The only consolation they had was in reflecting that they had done their best, and in joining in the general laugh at their own expense. The robber hunt was the great joke of the season.