“The judgment of the Court and of the law is, that for the offense for which you stand convicted you be delivered to the warden of the penitentiary of the State of Ohio, at Columbus, and be there imprisoned at hard labor for and during your natural life.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONCLUSION.
“An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told.”
If the reader has been disappointed in the fact that the hero of this narrative has not been vested with the glamour of princely wealth; that he has not been painted a knight-errant of more romantic type; and that a champion in the field of pillage and plunder should not wear golden spurs and a helmet of brass, the fault lies not with the author, but rather with the popular error which pre-supposes these fallacious results.
The stereotyped question of all interested in his career has been, “What did Rube Burrow do with his money?”
The accuracy of the statement is vouched for, that in all of the eight train robberies, from Ben Brook, Texas, to Flomaton, Ala., reckoning his share as equal with that of his companions in crime, Rube Burrow secured not exceeding five thousand five hundred dollars. He invested, in the spring of 1887, about four hundred dollars by purchasing a one-half interest, with his brother, in a few acres of land in Texas. Soon after the Genoa robbery he purchased for sixteen hundred dollars the farm on which his father now resides in Lamar County, paying four hundred dollars cash and giving his note for twelve hundred dollars. A few weeks after the Buckatunna robbery this note, through his father, was paid, some of the currency used being subsequently identified as part of that stolen at Buckatunna. The residue, the pitiful sum of three thousand five hundred dollars, was spent in the vain endeavor to avoid the ceaseless pursuit organized against him, and which made the latter years of his life an intolerable burden.
In the autumn of 1889 Rube Burrow made, through one of his kinsmen, a proposition to the officers of the Southern Express to surrender, upon the condition that he would not be tried for the murder of Hughes or Graves. The proposition was, of course, promptly declined.
L. C. Brock, alias Joe Jackson, stated, after his arrest, that he had at one time made up his mind to seek an interview with Detective Jackson, with a view of making some conditions for his own surrender, but Rube’s proposition having been declined he gave up the project.
Although lawless by instinct, training and ambition, these men had drunk the bitter cup of crime to the dregs, and longed, no doubt, to enfranchise themselves from the toils that beset them, and which, like an avenging Nemesis, pursued them to the end.
The Southern Express Company expended, independently of all rewards, about twenty thousand dollars in the hunting down of this band of train robbers. The total rewards offered for Rube Burrow amounted to about $3,500. The rewards of $1,000 by the United States Government, and $250 by the State of Mississippi, have been, so far, withheld, because the language of the statutes, both Federal and State, under which the rewards were offered, required conviction in the courts.