Bluffer's luck

by W. C. Tuttle

According to Baker, a lone bandit had twice operated successfully within a period of a month. The Wells Fargo safe had been smashed one night between Lobo Wells and Randall, netting the bandit about ten thousand dollars.

Less than a month later the Kernwood stage, carrying five thousand dollars in the strong box, was robbed just out of Lobo Wells, and the description of the lone robber tallied closely to that of the man who had robbed the express car. Descriptions given by men who have been looking down the muzzle of a gun are seldom accurate enough for identification, so the officers merely waited for the bandit to break out again.

It had come sooner than they anticipated, it seemed. Charley Prentice, transferring money from his window to the safe near closing time, the bank being empty of customers at the time, turned his head at a sound and found himself confronted by a masked cowboy.

According to Prentice’s testimony, the man spoke hoarsely, demanding all the money in the safe. Prentice was in no position to refuse, and had given the man what later proved to be seven thousand dollars.

At this moment a man came along the sidewalk in front of the bank, which was still open, and the bandit struck Prentice a sharp blow on the jaw with his fist, knocking Prentice down and badly dazing him, and then leaped the railing and going out through a rear entrance before Prentice could recover.

The man who had stopped in front of the bank was Amos Baggs, at that time prosecuting attorney, and he came in just in time to see the bandit stumble in the rear doorway, his hat falling back into the bank. Baggs did not know that the bank had been robbed, until he found Prentice on his hands and knees trying to stand up.

Even then Baggs did not realise what had been done until Prentice managed to explain, when Baggs ran for the sheriff, Harry Cole. Then Baggs remembered the bandit’s hat, which they found against the rear wall of the bank near the door, and in the sweat-band had been stamped the initials L.A.

According to Horace Baker, Len had no defence.

He admitted ownership of the hat, but said it had been misplaced at home and that he had been wearing an old one. The hat was a nearly-new Stetson and so large that the jury smiled when he said that it had been misplaced.

But Len refused to tell them where the money had been hidden, and they convicted him on the strength of the hat. Prentice was partly able to identify Len as the robber, and his first description covered the cowboy fairly well.