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Page 18
"Hit the ground," I ordered, and they both jumped off. We drove them
before us down the side of the train. While this was happening, Tom and
Ike had been blazing away, one on each side of the train, yelling like
Apaches, so as to keep the passengers herded in the cars. Some fellow
stuck a little twenty-two calibre out one of the coach windows and fired
it straight up in the air. I let drive and smashed the glass just over
his head. That settled everything like resistance from that direction.
By this time all my nervousness was gone. I felt a kind of pleasant
excitement as if I were at a dance or a frolic of some sort. The lights
were all out in the coaches, and, as Tom and Ike gradually quit firing and
yelling, it got to be almost as still as a graveyard. I remember hearing
a little bird chirping in a bush at the side of the track, as if it were
complaining at being waked up.
I made the fireman get a lantern, and then I went to the express car and
yelled to the messenger to open up or get perforated. He slid the door
back and stood in it with his hands up. "Jump overboard, son," I said,
and he hit the dirt like a lump of lead. There were two safes in the car
-- a big one and a little one. By the way, I first located the
messenger's arsenal -- a double-barrelled shot-gun with buckshot
cartridges and a thirty-eight in a drawer. I drew the cartridges from the
shot-gun, pocketed the pistol, and called the messenger inside. I shoved
my gun against his nose and put him to work. He couldn't open the big
safe, but he did the little one. There was only nine hundred dollars in
it. That was mighty small winnings for our trouble, so we decided to go
through the passengers. We took our prisoners to the smoking-car, and
from there sent the engineer through the train to light up the coaches.
Beginning with the first one, we placed a man at each door and ordered the
passengers to stand between the seats with their hands up.
If you want to find out what cowards the majority of men are, all you have
to do is rob a passenger train. I don't mean because they don't resist --
I'll tell you later on why they can't do that -- but it makes a man feel
sorry for them the way they lose their heads. Big, burly drummers and
farmers and ex-soldiers and high-collared dudes and sports that, a few
moments before, were filling the car with noise and bragging, get so
scared that their ears flop.
There were very few people in the day coaches at that time of night, so we
made a slim haul until we got to the sleeper. The Pullman conductor met
me at one door while Jim was going round to the other one. He very
politely informed me that I could not go into that car, as it did not
belong to the railroad company, and, besides, the passengers had already
been greatly disturbed by the shouting and firing. Never in all my life
have I met with a finer instance of official dignity and reliance upon the
power of Mr. Pull-man's great name. I jabbed my six-shooter so hard
against Mr. Conductor's front that I afterward found one of his vest
buttons so firmly wedged in the end of the barrel that I had to shoot it
out. He just shut up like a weak-springed knife and rolled down the car
steps.
I opened the door of the sleeper and stepped inside. A big, fat old man
came wabbling up to me, puffing and blowing. He had one coat-sleeve on
and was trying to put his vest on over that. I don't know who he thought
I was.
"Young man, young man," says he, "you must keep cool and not get excited.
Above everything, keep cool."
"I can't," says I. "Excitement's just eating me up." And then I let out a
yell and turned loose my forty-five through the skylight.
That old man tried to dive into one of the lower berths, but a screech
came out of it and a bare foot that took him in the bread-basket and
landed him on the floor. I saw Jim coming in the other door, and I
hollered for everybody to climb out and line up.
They commenced to scramble down, and for a while we had a three-ringed
circus. The men looked as frightened and tame as a lot of rabbits in a
deep snow. They had on, on an average, about a quarter of a suit of
clothes and one shoe apiece. One chap was sitting on the floor of the
aisle, looking as if he were working a hard sum in arithmetic. He was
trying, very solemn, to pull a lady's number two shoe on his number nine
foot.
The ladies didn't stop to dress. They were so curious to see a real, live
train robber, bless 'em, that they just wrapped blankets and sheets around
themselves and came out, squeaky and fidgety looking. They always show
more curiosity and sand than the men do.
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