The murder of the postmaster at Jewell, Ala., was done by Rube Burrow in a spirit of bravado, and, doubtless, with the design of terrorizing the law-abiding people of that section into such a state of timidity as would give additional safety to his chosen place of refuge, and at the same time knit him all the more closely to the lawless band of his followers, who not only connived at his crimes but profited from the spoils of his misdeeds.
Despite the vigilant and unremitting search of the detectives the presence of the bandit in Lamar County had not been definitely known until the murder of Graves occurred. The officials of the Southern Express Company determined, therefore, to either capture Rube or drive him from Lamar County. The task was a difficult one, in view of the fact that Rube never slept under a roof nor broke bread at any man’s table in Lamar County after the murder at Jewell. Soon thereafter, when invited by his father to come into his house, on one occasion, he refused, saying, “I might as well give myself up.”
Detectives Jackson and Burns, of the Southern Express Company, about this time went into Lamar County and literally camped there. They endeavored by every possible means to discover the whereabouts of the outlaws by shadowing the persons who communicated with them from time to time, but the army of scouts in the secret service of the cunning desperado was so well trained, the field in which they operated so extensive, that the only result obtained was to force them to leave.
About September 1st Rube and Joe concluded to depart. A few days before their departure, however, Mrs. Allen Burrow brought Rube a message from Rube Smith, to the effect that the latter wanted to see him.
Rube Smith is a son of James Smith, who lives in Lamar County, near Crews Station, and about eight miles from the home of Allen Burrow. He is a first cousin of the Burrow brothers. Smith was about twenty-eight years old, five feet eight inches high, weighed one hundred and sixty pounds, and bore a very bad reputation in all that section. He had never followed any legitimate occupation, except that, for a short period in 1883, he had been an itinerant photographer, moving about from place to place, and making cheap photographs in country towns of northern Alabama. In the fall of 1888, however, he was indicted, with James McClung and James Barker, an uncle, for robbery from the person of a Mr. Johnson, a respectable old farmer of Lamar County. Smith and party went to farmer Johnson’s home about nightfall, with their faces masked, and at the point of their revolvers demanded his money. The old man hesitating, was cruelly beaten, and at last divulged the hiding-place of his money, some three hundred dollars, which the robbers secured. They left their victim bleeding and maimed, lying upon the floor, where he remained until the next morning, when kindly neighbors came to his assistance. Rube Smith then became a fugitive from justice.
Burrow, knowing of the presence of the detectives in the vicinity, suspected that Smith was being used by the officers to entrap him. After considering the matter several days he sent, through his sister, a message to Rube Smith that he would meet him at the hour of midnight, September 4th, in Fellowship church-yard, a point about four miles from Vernon. Thither Burrow and Joe Jackson repaired early after dark, on that night, for the purpose of forestalling any plan which the detectives might have to capture them through Smith. The watch was set, and each, by turn, stood sentinel in this quiet and lonely spot, awaiting the appointed hour. Smith, in due course, appeared as agreed. He was alone, and Burrow was soon assured that his proposal to join him was genuine.
There, in the graveyard of Fellowship church, where the body of the famous outlaw now lies buried, at the solemn hour of midnight, the compact which linked Rube Smith’s fortunes with his own was made. There was no subscribing to the black oath, no signing in letters of blood, but with the skillfulness of a master Rube Burrow inducted his young kinsman into the office of train robbing to which he had elected him. He described the preliminary step of boarding the engine and getting the “drop;” the method of “holding up,” and all the subtle artifices of the craft, in such a masterly style that the new recruit smacked his lips in anticipation of the rich dish spread before his mental vision, and, after the manner of little Jack Horner, he mentally “put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, and said, what a good boy am I.”
Setting out, therefore, with the two-fold object of avoiding the detectives in Lamar County, and of robbing a train, the three men journeyed southward, but without any particular destination in view. Going down the west bank of the Tombigbee River, they traveled a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, to Buckatunna, Miss., on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, seventy-three miles north of Mobile.
After a careful deliberation of the matter, Rube Burrow selected Ellisville, Miss., a point on the Queen and Crescent Railway, sixty-five miles south of Meridian, and distant fifty-five miles east across the country, as the point for making his seventh train robbery.
Leaving the Mobile and Ohio Railway at Buckatunna on the fourteenth day of September, the men walked towards Ellisville, arriving there on the night of the 17th of September. Here Rube Burrow concluded, after finding there were three trains daily each way on that road, that there was no money in robbing a train on the Queen and Crescent Railway. He argued that the shipments would be divided up between the several trains, and no one train would carry much money. He had been so often disappointed in the amounts obtained that he was now planning, with great care, to make a big haul. He concluded, therefore, to reverse his course, return to Buckatunna, and rob the Mobile and Ohio, as the schedule on that line indicated only a single daily express train each way. Accordingly the robbers resumed their journey towards Buckatunna, through the “Free State of Jones.”