LACERATED EXTREMITIES
and bound them up in socks improvised from their underclothing. But they dared not rest here too long as the corn fields and potato-patches on which they depended for subsistance were at an inconvenient distance, and their hunters might flush their camp at any moment. Saturday night they again took up their tedious march, and about daylight went into camp a mile from the German Catholic church in Marysburgh, the bell of which was plainly heard by the robbers when [pg 30] it rung for early mass. They concluded not to attend church that day, contrary to the usual custom of Cole Younger at least, and a luxurious breakfast of roasted corn and baked potatoes was prepared. This camp was within a few rods of the edge of a clearing, showing the remarkable boldness of the gang. Here two small boys saw three of them walking just outside the woods, and reported it, but little faith was placed on their story, as the general impression was that the bandits were still in the woods behind Elysian or had made a break on their horses to the Minnesota river, and hence to parts unknown. Their camp of Friday night had not then been discovered; and it was supposed that they were still in possession of their horses.
In all the time intervening between Thursday afternoon and Monday morning, the robbers had made but about thirty miles, and although surrounded at times by
AT LEAST FIVE HUNDRED MEN,
they would not have suffered at all except for the cold and rain. In the Sunday camp a portion of a bloody shirt gave evidence that Bob Younger had been compelled to again dress his wounded arm.
Slowly the robbers proceeded, and their next camp was some four miles directly south of Marysburgh on the banks of Lake Madison in Blue Earth county. From here a bold strike was made directly west nearly nine miles, to a point but about 2½ miles back of the city of Mankato, where, finding an empty house in the woods on the Kron farm they slept comfortably Monday and Tuesday nights. During the most of this time they had lived on fodder corn uncooked, hazel nuts, grapes and wild plums, but Tuesday morning they made a requisition on a German farmer and procured a good breakfast. At the table they sat with their overcoats on, and their
BOWIE KNIVES BY THEIR PLATES.
They were uncommunicative, inoffensive and polite, and paid liberally for the hospitality shown them.
The hunt had continued while the bandits were escaping as above related, a reward of $1,000 offered by Governor Pillsbury, $700 by the Northfield bank, and $500 by the Winona and St. Peter railroad inciting many to action. The state reward was afterwards increased to $1,000 for each man dead or alive. However all were off the scent, the objective point of the pursuers being the woods back of Elysian from which the pursued had quietly passed. The headquarters of the robber hunters were made