In stopping the train the passenger coaches had been left on the trestle so as to prevent any one reaching the ground, twenty feet below, and making an attack from that quarter. The shots fired soon after the train was halted, two of which took effect in the steps of the coach on which Conductor Scholes stood, silenced further inquiry, and the work was completed without molestation.
When Burrow joined his comrades, after leaving the mail car, he seemed anxious to have the train start. During the run from the station down to the trestle he had forbidden the fireman to put any coal in the fire-box, and, hence while the train was being robbed so much steam was lost that it was ten minutes after the robbery was over before sufficient steam was obtained to get under headway. Finally the train resumed its onward course, and Burrow, sending a few parting shots of humor after Engineer Therrill, joined his comrades who were anxiously awaiting his coming in the brush a few yards distant.
The train dispatcher’s record of that day bore the simple explanation: “Number five delayed thirty minutes at Buckatunna trestle, getting robbed.”
The news of the robbery brought the officials of the Express and Railroad Companies by special train to the scene. Possees were at once organized and sent in pursuit. It was evident that the work was that of Rube Burrow. “I will rob this train or kill every man on it” was the identical expression used at Genoa and at Duck Hill. His disposition to be humorous—in fact, every detail of the robbery gave evidence of his identity as the leader.
The robbers were traced from the scene of their crime in an easterly course. Blood-hounds were used in the pursuit, but the trail being cold they were abandoned. The detectives, however, quietly took up the trail and followed it towards Demopolis, Ala. At this point it was found that Rube Smith separated from the other men about October 5th, and went by rail into Lamar County. Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson continued their journey afoot, and traveling by easy stages reached Lamar County on the night of October 23d, impelled by some strange fancy to return to the spot from which they had been so recently routed, and from which they were soon to depart again.
DETECTIVE T. V. JACKSON.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CAPTURE OF RUBE SMITH AND JAMES M’CLUNG AT AMORY, MISS.—M’CLUNG’S CONFESSION—A PLAN TO ROB THE TRAIN FALLS THROUGH—A SAFE ROBBERY NIPPED IN THE BUD.
When the Buckatunna robbery of September 25, 1889, occurred, the fact that three men participated in that deed proved that a third man had joined Rube Burrow since his last robbery at Duck Hill, on December 15, 1888, and the identity of the third man puzzled the detectives of the Express Company for some weeks. An accurate description, however, of all three of the men had been obtained, and Detective Thomas Jackson, after a visit into Lamar County a few weeks after the robbery, became convinced that it was Rube Smith. On the eighth day of October, succeeding the Buckatunna robbery, Rube Smith appeared in Lamar County, exhibited a good deal of money, and was known to be in hiding in the vicinity of his father’s home. Here he remained for some weeks, narrowly escaping capture at the hands of Detective Thomas Jackson several times, while the latter was daily securing additional evidence of his complicity in the Buckatunna affair. Finally, in the latter part of November, 1889, Jim McClung, an old acquaintance of Rube Smith’s, left Itawamba County, Miss., to visit his relatives in Lamar County, and while en route thither fell in with Rube Smith near the house of that worthy’s father. Rube exhibited quite a sum of money to McClung, and invited him to accompany him to the Indian Territory, which McClung agreed to do. This was the hiding place to which Smith had gone soon after the Johnson robbery.
The two men left for the Indian Territory. Their destination was Kavanaugh, and Smith unfolded to McClung, while en route, the whole story of the Buckatunna train robbery and the part he played in it. He described every detail and circumstance of the robbery, and McClung, having a very retentive memory, was afterwards enabled to testify about it so minutely that the jury in the Federal Court, before which Smith had a mistrial in May, 1890, concluded that Jim McClung had participated in that robbery. Such, however, was not the fact.