Walker of the Secret Service

by Melville Davisson Post

Three men were lying out before a fire of tree limbs in a forest. It was a country of mountains, the foothills of the Alleghenies extending westward toward the Ohio. In every direction were wooded hills, the rough mountainous foothills of the great range as it broke down westward toward the flat lands.

For some reason that I do not know, Mooney was confident that he had finally located the treasure train for which he had been always looking.

As I have said before, in this narrative, I did not know what sources of information were available to this man, but I think he had some cue to what was being shipped. At any rate he was confident that, at last, he was about to make “the great haul.”

We had come into this country together and had got off at a town some fifty miles distant from the point at which we were now lying before our wood fire. From this town we had each taken a different train to a station in the direction of the place at which Mooney intended to make the holdup. I had gone to a station farthest along the line; from the two other stations, Mooney and White had walked along the track until they picked me up. We came finally to the water tank in the mountains, at which point Mooney had determined to hold up the New York & St. Louis Express.

He knew all about this train; knew that it stopped at this water tank in the mountains on schedule time, and knew what it carried on this night.

We had all gone about a mile and a half east of the tank where a small stream came down out of the mountain. We had followed this stream perhaps a quarter of a mile into the wood and there we had built the fire.

At midnight we got up and followed the little stream down to the track; here we divided; White was to go about two miles west along the track, while Mooney and I were to take up a position in the shadow of the water tank.

We were barely in position, in the heavy shadow, when I heard the train; it seemed far off, a low rumble in the mountains. Then suddenly it thundered through a gap in the hills and pulled up by the tank. It required only a few moments to take water, and as the train pulled out Mooney and I slipped from the heavy shadow and swung up on the rear of the tender.

We climbed very quickly down towards the engine cab.

Here I very nearly had a serious accident. I caught hold of something in the darkness which looked like a hand rail. It proved to be a rake used by the fireman, and it was hot. The inside of my hand was scorched. I made some exclamation unconsciously indicating that my hand was burned. The fireman and engineer both turned toward us.