“I’ll teach you how to open my mail,” said Rube.
Graves staggered towards a chair, and falling into it, said: “Rube Burrow, you have killed me.”
The murderer then turned, and leveling his pistol at the head of a young girl who was an assistant in the post-office, said: “Get my mail or I will blow your head off.”
The frightened creature, in her terror, could not find the parcel until Graves, pointing to it with uplifted hand, bade her get it, and sinking to the floor soon expired.
Graves’s wife, at the firing of the shot which killed her husband, rushed in from an adjoining room. Despite Rube’s threat to kill her if she entered she flew to the assistance of her dying husband. He was conscious, however, long enough for his ante-mortem statement to be carefully taken, in the presence of witnesses, certifying to the fact that Rube Burrow was his murderer. Rube walked out of the town unmolested, and at ten o’clock that night reached the house of Jim Cash, his hands stained with the blood of one of Lamar County’s most respected citizens—the perpetrator of a deed as wanton and as cold-blooded as ever blackened the annals of crime.
Rube and Joe were not amiss in surmising that the officers of the law would swoop down upon them. As soon as Rube returned to Jim Cash’s, about ten o’clock that night, he informed Joe Jackson, his partner, of the events of the evening. The latter had advised strongly against the policy of taking Graves’s life, and warned Rube of the consequences; but Rube’s spirit was full of revenge, and he determined upon the murder.
All of northern Alabama was aroused with indignation at the cruel and wanton murder, and ex-Sheriff Pennington, heading a posse of determined citizens, went into the Burrow neighborhood a few days afterward and made an earnest endeavor to capture the outlaws. Too much praise can not be accorded this brave and gallant man, and had the laws of Alabama admitted his re-election to a second term it is more than probable that the career of these train robbers in Lamar County would have been less bold and protracted.
The homes of Allen Burrow, John T. Burrow and Jim Cash were all raided, and these men, who were openly aiding and abetting the outlaws, were arrested and taken to the Vernon jail. Threats of releasing the prisoners reached the officers, and the excitement grew with each passing hour. A strong guard was put around the Vernon jail to prevent this, and at the same time it was whispered that the prisoners were in imminent danger of being lynched.
At this juncture the Governor of Alabama, in answer to a call made upon him by the sheriff of Lamar County, sent a military company from Birmingham to keep the peace. The troops remained at Vernon pending the arraignment and trial of these men, who were released, however, under bond, and being subsequently tried, were acquitted of the charge of being accessory to the murder of the postmaster.