"If any killing is to be done," pursued the Captain, "it will be well for you to kill all my family, and leave none to avenge the injury."
Mrs. Samuels saw that Captain Thomason was in earnest, and that no compromise or apology could be extorted, and she took her departure.
The efforts of Captain Thomason were not all that were made for arresting the James boys about the time of the Gallatin tragedy. The Daviess county officials hunted them. Detectives from Chicago and St. Louis tracked them and sought an opportunity to entrap them. But these shrewd men were not so to be caught. All attempts to capture them proved abortive.
CHAPTER XVII.
OUTRAGE AT COLUMBIA, KENTUCKY.
"Gold begets in brethren hate;
Gold, in families, debate;
Gold does friendship separate;
Gold does civil wars create."
The James Boys were good travelers, and did not confine themselves to narrow limits. One week they might be in Clay county, Missouri, and the next in Nelson, or Logan, or Jessamine county, Kentucky, and then in five days more or less they would be in New York City, and in another week they might be found in Texas far toward the Mexican border. The Boys understood the advantages of rapid movements. When they had "business" on hand, they never appeared in the vicinity of the scene of their intended operation. Only one or two of their most trusted friends, under any circumstances, were allowed to know anything of their presence in the vicinity. When going to commit a robbery in a strange place, the utmost caution was used to keep down even the suspicion that anything was wrong. Thus it was with the band at Russellville, and at Gallatin, Mo. No one had seen them or even heard of any suspicious characters around. In both cases the first intimation the citizens had of the presence of banditti in their streets was the reports of fire-arms and the shouts of the dashing robbers as they thundered along the highways. They appeared as suddenly as a meteor, and departed as quickly as an apparition. Such were their tactics at Northfield, where the Jameses are known to have taken part in the attempt to rob the bank. Precisely the same order was observed on the occasion of the outrage at Columbia, Kentucky, which we shall now proceed to describe.