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Page 17
V HOLDING UP A TRAIN
[Note. The man who told me these things was for several years an outlaw
in the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he so frankly describes.
His description of the _modus_ _operandi_ should prove interesting, his
counsel of value to the potential passenger in some future "hold-up,"
while his estimate of the pleasures of train robbing will hardly induce
any one to adopt it as a profession. I give the story in almost exactly
his own words. O. H.]
Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up a
train would be a hard job. Well, it isn't; it's easy. I have contributed
some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of express companies,
and the most trouble I ever had about a hold-up was in being swindled by
unscrupulous people while spending the money I got. The danger wasn't
anything to speak of, and we didn't mind the trouble.
One man has come pretty near robbing a train by himself; two have
succeeded a few times; three can do it if they are hustlers, but five is
about the right number. The time to do it and the place depend upon
several things.
The first "stick-up" I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way I got
into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business. Five
out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone wrong.
The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man and plays
some low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name. Wire fences and
"nesters" made five of them; a bad heart made the sixth. Jim S-- and I
were working on the 101 Ranch in Colorado. The nesters had the cowman on t
he go. They had taken up the land and elected officers who were hard to
get along with. Jim and I rode into La Junta one day, going south from a
round-up. We were having a little fun without malice toward any-body when
a farmer administration cut in and tried to harvest us. Jim shot a deputy
marshal, and I kind of corroborated his side of the argument. We
skirmished up and down the main street, the boomers having bad luck all
the time. After a while we leaned forward and shoved for the ranch down
on the Ceriso. We were riding a couple of horses that couldn't fly, but
they could catch birds.
A few days after that, a gang of the La Junta boomers came to the ranch
and wanted us to go back with them. Naturally, we declined. We had the
house on them, and before we were done refusing, that old 'dobe was plumb
full of lead. When dark came we fagged 'em a batch of bullets and shoved
out the back door for the rocks. They sure smoked us as we went. We had
to drift, which we did, and rounded up down in Oklahoma.
Well, there wasn't anything we could get there, and, being mighty hard up,
we decided to transact a little business with the railroads. Jim and I
joined forces with Tom and Ike Moore -- two brothers who had plenty of
sand they were willing to convert into dust. I can call their names, for
both of them are dead. Tom was shot while robbing a bank in Arkansas; Ike
was killed during the more dangerous pastime of attending a dance in the
Creek Nation.
We selected a place on the Santa Fe where there was a bridge across a deep
creek surrounded by heavy timber. All passenger trains took water at the
tank close to one end of the bridge. It was a quiet place, the nearest
house being five miles away. The day before it happened, we rested our
horses and "made medicine" as to how we should get about it. Our plans
were not at all elaborate, as none of us had ever engaged in a hold-up
before.
The Santa Fe flyer was due at the tank at 11.15 P. M. At eleven, Tom and
I lay down on one side of the track, and Jim and Ike took the other. As
the train rolled up, the headlight flashing far down the track and the
steam hissing from the engine, I turned weak all over, I would have worked
a whole year on the ranch for nothing to have been out of that affair
right then. Some of the nerviest men in the business have told me that
they felt the same way the first time.
The engine had hardly stopped when I jumped on the running-board on one
side, while Jim mounted the other. As soon as the engineer and fireman
saw our guns they threw up their hands without being told, and begged us
not to shoot, saying they would do anything we wanted them to.
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