Inspector A. G. Sharp, of the United States Postal Service, who has been very zealous in urging that the rewards offered by the Government be paid, writes under date of December 17, 1890, as follows:
“While in Washington recently, I laid the matter of reward for Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson before the Postmaster-General and the Chief Inspector, and strongly urged that the rewards for both be paid, and the question of conviction be waived. I believe the claims to be just, and that good policy suggests prompt payment. I feel satisfied that the Postmaster-General will accept my advice in the matter, and that the rewards for both will be paid in full. Of this, however, I can not speak positively; but from the reply made by the Postmaster-General, to my earnest solicitation, I feel justified in saying that I have strong reasons for believing that he will make the order allowing the rewards.”
All other rewards for Rube Burrow have been paid to Carter and his associates. The rewards for Brock and Smith, excepting those offered by the Government and the State of Mississippi, have also been paid to the parties interested.
William Brock, of Texas, was in nowise related to L. C. Brock. The two men never met, and that two of Burrow’s clansmen bore the same name was merely a coincidence.
The question recurs, “Does train-robbing pay?”
Here were men whose untoward inclinings, fostered by evil association, inflamed them with a passion for lawlessness. Their brawny arms were uplifted against the laws of God and man for ambition’s sake. They loved pillage for booty’s sake.
Behold the hapless fate of the five men who linked their fortunes together, commencing with the date of the Genoa robbery in December, 1887. William Brock, although sentenced to a short term of imprisonment, will carry to his grave the stigma of an ex-convict. Rube Smith has entered the gloomy portals of a prison, in which he is doomed to spend the remaining days of his life—a fate more horrible than death.
Rube Burrow, Jim Burrow and L. C. Brock lie in unhallowed graves, their memories kept alive only by the recollection of their atrocious deeds, leaving their kindred and friends to realize the bitter truth that
“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”