The Globe-republican. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1889-1910, 1894-10-12
CHAPTER XIV.

| two orders OF events one Is the SLOW
focusing of public suspicion about the
operations at Laran. The other is the
extraordinary relationship of the prin-
cipal personages at the headquarters
of the conspiracy.
A week passes and men are strag-
Cling back to the Laran from all over
the country. They come in through
the woods at night singly or in little
groups They arrive 1T the Wash
bayou, coming down from st. Louis
and crossing at night from the Ar
kansas shore: the come up from
Memphis looking for work and some
of them ride IL from the mountains of
East Tennessee.
Hendricks watches TIE reassembling
with cool calculation and appears to
have been satisfied of the main re-
suits About fifteen per cent. of the
men never reappearcd. This was ac-
cording to his calculations. But the
rest, actuated by the fear of individual
peril, the esprit de corps Of military
organization, or the desire to go on
with the war which master-spirit
| Ilco plduuCl. ldu. Ill SICdC pa I, iC0
turned at the end of the week. at that
time there were by count five hundred
and fifty men of the regiment back in
the cave.
Hendricks sat up all one night read
ing the papers that had been brought
him from Memphis. He went over all
the accounts carefully. There was not
| - scn 70 hn
truth The regiment had got away
and it had accomplished its purpose,
but the further away from the scene
the comments were, the less seriously
| the newspapers regarded the occur
renee. In New York there was some
kind of enormous western practical
joke suspected. ''How," said one jour
nal, "a regiment of thousand men
can come and go without observation,
can dismantle bank and then depart
with million dollars in specie without
being detected or interfered with or
tracked, remains for the imaginative
west to explain. 1t looks very much
at this distance as if the English
company had been operating in phan-
toms to bear it's own market"
An angry official correspondence had
taken place between the governor Of
Tennessee and the governor of Indiana.
The town of st. Mary's and the city of
Paducah swarmed with newspaper
men and detectives. But it was plain
to Hendricks that fresh troubles at St.
Mary's between the director and the
men threatened to draw attention
from the search for the soldiers.
An official report of Gen. Waterson,
the officer commanding the st. Mary's
expedition, has been preserved.
| Whether it was forwarded before his
| return to L;lran or was written subSe-
| luently is not known. But it gives
very clear explanation of the novel
method adopted in this military cam
paign.
1t reads as follows:
1.-The whole plan has worked, with Few
| slight discrepancies, as projected The FEAST
| bility of getting the whole regiment into St..
| Mary and the neighborhood without attract
| ing attention was easily proven. My men be-
| gan to come in four days before they assembled
They were in fairly good shape and passed for,
| wOrkmen out Of employment and idlers drawn
IN by the excitement 1t was impossible to 60
| anywhere without seeing them minglinR with
| the workmen and standing about on the corners
! with The une,nrloyed. n three days seven hun :
| dred were in ST. Mary and three hundred in and
| about Paducah, with orders to come in stray
| glingly to the former place on the fourth day.
! At any other time q thousand men suddenly
added to the population Of SO small a town
would have excited suspicion but the excite
ment OF the strike was supposed to be drawing
must be given to our forces who, rule kept
themselves close and avoided attracting atten-
ton. On the night OF the third day, three hun
dred were already in the old house on the bar;
rens or in the immediate vicinity undergoing
the most extraordinary discomfort on account
OF the want of accommodations, and an houri
before sunrise on the fourth day, I had the
whole command within reach and most Of them
uniformed and armed We formed column 1T
five o'clock in the barreES just three miles
southeast OF the town and marched In on the
railroad track; took possession of the bank at
nine O'Clock. distributed money among regi-
ments as planned without opposition, each man
carrying a hundred and'fifty eagles. The buck
skin belts worked admirably. / deployed two
hundred men, Companies A and F, and kept
crowd one thousand feet from bank, withdraw
ing them in squads and replacing them with
other men who were loaded up with specie;
successfully avoided collision with sheriff
WIZ "AS SoIupicttly UcWuutTcu ny eNeutSs
took camp at six O'Clock p IN. on the terrace
rs planned and the regiment began at once to
meltaway. -Four hundred men got out Of their
uniforms in the center Of the camp where
they were securely shielded) before nine
O'Clock The suits in the knapsacks turned
out better than 1 expected and Commissary
Fenning should be credited with great skill
and ingenuity in the provision Of these suits
The uniforms were put into the knapsacks and
OF twelve midnight started the men In Indian
file to the old house and as by that time hsd
four hundred more men ready, there were eight
hundred knapsacks and eight hundred guns to
be disposed Of; by making each man carry two
guns and two knapsacks, easily got the whole
eight hundred into the house. The intense
darkness Of the night was great advantage
and the hardness Of the ground and TIE special
guards stationed along the lines to prevent
struggling or the nttering Of the rout, aided US
much
AT three o'clock in the morning the regi-
ment, as uniformed organization, had disap-
peared
The disposition OF the men was as follows:
One hundred went scatterinyly from the camp
back to town in their former clothes at ten
O'Clock: another hundred got on at eleven
o'clock, and o third at twelve O'Clock Grew