Chester Hughes had been in charge of a widowed sister, who, with several small children, were en route to Jackson, Tenn. The sister knew nothing of her brother’s participation in the fight with the robbers until he was carried back into the coach, when she prostrated herself in affectionate embrace over his body, from which life was fast ebbing away. The scene was an agonizing and affecting one.
The unerring aim of the robber had sent three shots through the body of young Hughes, all entering the stomach within a radius of six inches, and the unfortunate but daring young fellow lived only a few minutes. The same train on which he had erstwhile embarked in the vigor of health and buoyant spirits, bore his lifeless form to the home of his widowed mother at Jackson, Tenn.
The Southern Express Company and the Illinois Central Railway promptly presented his grief-stricken mother with a fitting testimonial of appreciation for the heroic conduct of her son. While
“On Fame’s eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead,”
the name of Chester Hughes will be enrolled among the bravest of the brave.
The whole country was electrified with horror at the brutal murder of a passenger on one of the great trunk lines of railway, in one of the most populous districts of the South, by train robbers, and it was determined that no expense or labor should be spared in bringing the criminals to justice. General Manager C. A. Beck and Superintendent J. G. Mann, of the Illinois Central Railway, were in Memphis in a special car at the time. During the night a violent and very general rain storm had prevailed, and the telegraph wires were down in many places. The news of the robbery did not, therefore, reach Memphis until about midnight. The railroad and express officials remained at the telegraph office all night, seeking the details, and left about daylight for the scene of the robbery. The aid of the Pinkertons was again summoned, and several of the most expert detectives of the Chicago agency soon arrived at Duck Hill.
About a month prior to the Duck Hill robbery the United States Express Company had been robbed at Derby, Miss., a station sixty-five miles north of New Orleans, on the Queen and Crescent Railway, by Eugene Bunch, a man who is supposed by some persons, even at this day, to be identical with Rube Burrow. Eugene Bunch, a native of Louisiana, and long a resident of Texas, bore a remarkable resemblance to Rube Burrow. The description, about thirty-six years old, weight one hundred and seventy pounds, height six feet one inch, light complexion, auburn hair, long, drooping mustache, blue eyes, raw-boned and stoop-shouldered, would fit either Rube Burrow or Eugene Bunch. Apart from this personal resemblance they bore nothing else in common except the title of train robber. Their habits and methods of life were strikingly dissimilar. Bunch was a man of some education, had taught school in Louisiana and Texas, and was for a long period of time a County Court Clerk in Texas, while Burrow was a coarse, unlettered fellow, and it may be stated, as a certainty, that these men never had any association as train robbers or otherwise.