During the time occupied by a part of the robber band about the express car, a patrol was distributed along the sides of the train, and these were discharging fire-arms at intervals, for the purpose, as is supposed, of intimidating the passengers.
The whole time occupied in completing this great robbery probably did not exceed ten minutes. The whole amount of booty secured was probably fully forty thousand dollars. The passengers were greatly alarmed during these proceedings. Valuables were hastily concealed under seats, about the persons of the owners, and wherever else a place not likely to be examined by the robbers could be found. After concluding the work which brought them to Glendale, the brigands, amid the reports of pistol shots, set up a shout which echoed among the hills for a long distance around, sought their horses, mounted, and rode away through the gloom. They had locked the citizens in the little station-house. These waited until everything seemed still about the place, for the train had moved on, and then they broke down the door and walked out of their temporary prison-house.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
HUNTING CLUES.
After the affair at Glendale, the marshal of Kansas City, Major James Liggett, a cool-tempered, clear-headed man, took charge of the case and directed all movements intended to result in the discovery of the robbers. It was soon ascertained beyond a doubt that Jesse James had been in Kansas City only a few days before the robbery. Then the inquiry proceeded as to who else had probably been participants. It came to the knowledge of the marshal that Jim Cummings, Ed. Miller, and a hard character named Blackamore, had been moving about the country in a suspicious way. Little by little, fragmentary scraps of information were secured, and a generalization of all the facts led to the general conclusion that the train robbery at Glendale had been effected under the direction of the James Boys; that certainly Jesse, and probably Frank, had participated in it, and that Jim Cummings, Ed. Miller and Blackamore were probable accomplices.
The next important point to gain, was information concerning the route travelled by the bandits in their retreat from the scene of their lawless depredation. This was not so easy a task as the uninitiated might conclude. The character of much of the country in western Missouri, with the thorough knowledge of the region possessed by the principals in the outrage, forbade an easy discovery of the route which they had taken. But the marshal had called about him men as well acquainted with the country as any of Quantrell's old raiders could be, and the little information gathered by each one, finally brought together, led to the inference that they had gone in a southerly direction toward the Indian Territory. The inference afterward became a certainty. Their "trail" was discovered.
Men were at once placed at various points on their probable line of retreat; men were dispatched on their trail to hunt them to their places of concealment. There were men in western Missouri who had ridden with the old Guerrilla band, bold, daring men, who laid aside the weapons of destruction when the war closed; men who had never learned the meaning of the word fear, who yet became weary of turmoil and strife, and settled down in life as quiet citizens, who long ago ceased to sympathize with their old comrades in their acts of outlawry, and who, notwithstanding their peaceable demeanor, were subjected to annoying suspicions at every recurrence of the visitations of their former associates; who felt when the train was robbed at Glendale that it was time to take a positive stand on the side of the law and to co-operate with the officers in every endeavor to put an end to such depredations for all time by capturing the depredators. These persons became active allies of Marshal Liggett in his efforts against the bandits, and materially contributed to the discovery of the robbers and the line which they had chosen on their retreat. So the active campaign began. There is reason to believe that after the robbery was consummated, at least a part of the band went into Clay county, and remained in seclusion there for some days. Then they started south.
It was pending these events that Marshal Liggett made an arrangement with George W. Shepherd, formerly a Guerrilla captain, under whom Jesse James served near the close of the war, to take part in the campaign, then about to be prosecuted against the bandits. As subsequent events have brought Shepherd prominently before the public, and the mystery which attaches to some of the proceedings will continue to excite the interest of the public until it is cleared up, it is deemed best to present a brief history of the career of George W. Shepherd in this connection.