Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1894-12-20
dred lief. and at Princeton junction. at


more Disappeared Fifteen miles out
Of Bristol the remaining hundred
dropped from the cars. The engine
was then reversed AID the train
started spinning backwards to meet
the special.
Most of these men adopted the plan
that had been tried at ST. Mary's- They
started at once in diverging lines
and disappeared in the surrounding
country.
The excitement in New York over
the affair was widespread, and was
famed into flame before evening by
the news that came from Philadelphia
that the United States mint had been
similarly robbed by another regiment
that had seized a train and gone to
Lancaster.
The next morning full details of the
two exploits were printed, and there
was no doubt that they were both
parts of one plan. But no one appears
to have suspected the exact method of
the regiments or their plan of subse-
quent disintegration. The popular
imagination planted an armed force
in the field somewhere and added un-
told resources of men out of its own
terrors. Something of this feeling was
reflected by the press and the action
of the secretary of the treasury, for all
the endeavors were directed to the in
Perception and capture of an armed
force which as the reader knows did
not exist. New York now recalled the
ST. Mary's affair which it had formerly
treated as western practical joke,
and the Louisville papers were rather
| exultant at what they called an eastern
dose of the joke.
But it must not be supposed that the
central police-office at New York had
| been entirely led astray by these
events. 1t had quietly arrested six
| men whom it's sharp-eyed detectives
had recognized as being in the ranks
of the visiting regiment, and on one OF
them was found five hundred dollars
in gold. The superintendent, who saw
underneath the surface what he con-
| ceived to be a vast and braiEy con-
| spiracy, summoned his best men; put
| himself in communication with the
secret service bureau at Washington,
and very soon began to formulate some
of the inevitable deductions In this
| he was fortunately aided by one or two
circumstances. He obtained from the
Washington bureau the photographs OF
| the men who had boarded the COrin-
| THAN, which photographs had been
| forwarded from England. One of the
persons in the group was discovered to
| be Fenning. The other circumstance
was that the Washington bureau had
sent two men west on his trail and
they had disappeared in Tennessee.
| With these facts before him, it did not
take the superintendent very long to
focus his suspicious upon western
| Tennessee.
| CHAPTER Xxx
The one man who seemed to have
the clearest comprehension of all this
was Hendricks, who, from his retreat
underground, watched by some in
scrutable process every move that was
made. Gen. Waterson reached Laran
on the Goth of July. He left New
York just six hours before the police
began to look for him, and he found
that four hundred and fifty of his men
had preceded him to the Laran. Dur
ing his absence the sanitarium had
been burned to the ground. This took
place on the Sth. On the 9th Gen.
Luscomb's party had been attacked in
the rear. The general had been killed
and his men routed. Those that es-
capped got in at Covington and re-
ported the sanitarium burnt and the
gang gone eastward. In the public
mind this appeared to explain the ap-
pearance of the regiment in New York
on the 18th.
| About ten miles east of the Laran
snugly perched on the side of wild
glen is solitary Swiss cottage. 1t is
built of stone and looks down upon a
rugged but beautiful country. 1t is
just three miles from the town of
Hoxie on a branch of the Tennessee
railroad where there is a post Office
and telegraph station. The people in
the town understand that an eastern
literary woman who has an enormous
mail has hired the place on account
of it's seclusion and salubrity. She
has a pony and two servants, one
of whom is a man, and she comes to
town frequently with her pony to
mail her letters, get her papers and
meet an occasional visitor from the
east whom she takes back with her.
| L Ills literary NoLudu 10 ihA AiCh-
bricks. In her pretty little boudoir
on the secoud floor she has a tele-
graph instrument built into the wall,
and she communicates constantly with
Hendricks in the Laran by an under
ground wire that has been laid with
great care and expense through the
widest and most unfrequented part
of the intervening country and which
enters the cave through an artesian
drill that is hidden by four feet of soil.
In fragment of a preserved letter
of Hendricks he says: ''This wire cost
me more trouble and labor than any
thing else. 1t had to be laid at inter
walls after careful survey in order to
avoid observation, and it had to follow
the unfrequented ways and escape the
possible surface water courses, for if it
had been barred and discovered my
enemies would have had the iron clew
that ran to the heart of my mystery"
The man servant in this esta blish-
ment is none other than Fenning. The
room in which he and his companion
toll at their mail is tastefully furnished
and the windows on the inside are pro-
vided with steel blinds. The two Royal
Dane mastiffs that have already been
seen at the sanitarium lie at full
length on the rug. They can be de-
pended upon to hear a football on the
mountain side before it gets within a
hundred feet of the house.
In this comfortable and secluded re-
treat Mrs. Hendricks is at work during