A. BUNKER.
While Bunker and Wilcox received occasional attention from Heywood's assailants, their special custodian was Bob Younger. As Bunker had his pen in his hand when first ordered to hold up his hands, it remained for a time poised in the air. When he made an effort to lay it down, Younger, noticing the movement, and thinking it an [pg 21] attempt to reach a weapon, sprang at Bunker, and thrusting his revolver into his face, said, “Hear, put up your hands and keep 'em up, or I'll kill you!” Then, to hold his prisoners more completely under his control, he compelled them both to get down on their knees under the counter. All the robbers were very much excited, and increasingly so as they found themselves baffled and resisted. Younger would point his pistol first at one of the young men and then at the other, turning from time to time to search among the papers on the desk, or to open a drawer in quest of valuables.
While still on his knees, Bunker remembered a revolver kept on a shelf under the teller's window, and edged toward the place in hope of reaching it. Turning his head that way while Younger's back was toward him, his movement was instantly detected by Pitts, who leaped before him, and seizing the pistol, put it in his own pocket, remarking, “You needn't try to get hold of that. You couldn't do any thing with that little derringer, anyway.” It is no doubt fortunate that Bunker did not succeed in reaching the weapon, as he would almost certainly have been shot down by the robbers before he could use it. The pistol was found upon Pitts at the time of his capture and death.
Bunker now rose to his feet, intending to make some effort to escape or to give an alarm. As he did so, Younger turned to him and said, “Where's the money outside the safe? Where's the cashier's till?” Bunker showed him a partitioned box on the counter, containing some small change and fractional currency; but did not call his attention to a drawer beneath the counter, containing $3,000 in bills. Again ordering Bunker to get down on his knees and keep his hands up, Younger drew from under his coat a grain-sack, which he began to fill from the box. Presently he turned again to Bunker, and finding him on his feet, he said, with a wicked look and with an outburst of horrible profanity, “There's more money than that out here. Where's that cashier's till? And what in —— are you standing up for? I told you to keep down.” Seizing Bunker, and forcing him to the floor, Younger pressed the muzzle of his revolver against Bunker's temple and said, “Show me where that money is, you —— —— —— or I'll kill you!” Receiving no answer, he left Bunker and renewed his search for the money.
Bunker once more regained his feet, and taking advantage of a moment when the robber's face was turned, he dashed past Wilcox, into and through the directors' room, to the rear door, [pg 23] then closed with blinds fastened on the inside. His intention was to enter the rear of Manning's hardware store, on the other side of the alley, and give the alarm. He knew nothing yet of what was going on in the street, and he believed Heywood to be dead from the effect of the pistol shot apparently aimed at his head.
The first of the robbers to notice the escape was Pitts, whose eyes seemed to be everywhere at once, and who was then with Heywood in front of the vault. Before he had time to shoot, however, Bunker was out of his range around the corner of the vault, and making for the door. With a mad yell Pitts bounded after the fugitive, and coming in sight of him, fired as he ran, the ball whizzing past Bunker's ear and through the blind in front of him. Bunker threw his weight against the blinds, bursting them open, plunged down a flight of outside steps, and had nearly reached the rear entrance of the next building when he was again fired upon by Pitts. This time the ball hit its mark, passing through the right shoulder, near the joint, barely missing the sub-clavian artery, and coming out just below the collar-bone. As he felt the sting and shock of the wound, he stumbled; but keeping his feet, and not knowing how badly he might be wounded, he [pg 24] ran on across a vacant lot and around to a surgeon's office in the next block. Pitts gave up the chase and returned to his companions in the bank, but only to hear one of their confederates on the outside shout, “The game is up! Better get out, boys. They're killing all our men.” Hearing this, the three robbers sprang through the teller's window and rushed into the street. As the last one climbed over the counter, he turned toward poor Heywood, who had gotten upon his feet and was staggering toward his desk, and deliberately shot him through the head. The act was without provocation or excuse, and was afterwards denounced by others of the gang as “a fool act,” though others still made an absurd attempt to justify it on the ground of self-defense. It was a piece of cowardly revenge on the part of a ruffian who was made desperate by defeat, and who, as was evident throughout the entire scene in the bank, was badly under the influence of liquor.
A. R. MANNING