The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1899-12-07
o o o o o

Just finished telling of hold up on
the S. p. The drummer shifted con-
temptuously.
"You fellows don't know what a
hold-up is" he exclaimed. "Why [ can
tell you of one that took place over
here on the Cotton Belt that beats any
thing ever saw or heard tell Of"
"Why, when was that ?" asked one of
them, give been in this country a
great deal longer than you have and l
never heard of any big hold-up on that
road"
"No," said the drummer, 81 suppose
not. I'll tell you about it though, and
in the future you can't plead ignorance.
Several years ago had been up to ST..
Louis on business, and decided to re-
turn by the Cotton Belt which was a
narrow guage at that time. AS is usual
in such cases, standard guage sleepers
were put on narrow guage trucks and
run through to the terminus where
they were again placed on the standard
trucks and taken on south or west, as
the case might be, by some other road.
eve started from St. Louis between
eight and nine o'clock in the evening,
and before long everybody was
wrapped in the arms of the god of
sleep:
"rhe next morning we awoke to find
that we had crossed the two great
rivers (the Mississippi and Ohio at
Cairo and were rolling towards the
Arkansas line at the usual narrow
gauge rate of speed, which wasn't
speed at all but just the
opposite. During the day made
the acquaintance of couple of
roughly dressed travellers, though in
spite of their rough dress and uncouth
speech and manners seemed to have
plenty of the long green, and that you
all know covers multitude of sins. [
noticed that. both these men were
heavily armed Each had two big six
shooters, one of which was carried in
the waistband of the trousers while
the other was carried in shoulder
holster. But of course it was very
common for people to go armed then
and paid no particular attention toit.
"Hold-ups were rather frequent
those days, and naturally enough, our
talk, in part at any rate, consisted of
that most exciting subject. 1t struck
me though after a while that these
men were rather averse to speaking on
this subject, but as there was not
much else to talk about kept driving
away. One thing L observed particu-
larly was that at nearly every long
stop, land they were Frequently one or
both of them would get off the car and
saunter, apparently in a careless man.
ner, up toward the front of the train
and stand and gaze at the express and
mail cars. At the time, however, l
gave the matter little thought but it
all came to my mind like flash, after
ward.
swell, we were bowling along down
through Arkansas, at fairly good
rate until we got to Brinkley. At this
place, which we reached for dinner,
three more even rougher looking fell
lows than the two 1 have been speak
ing Of, boarded the train and entering
the sleeper, asked for berths. The con.
ductor was engaged in making out
their checks, when the first two came
in from dinner, and saw to my sur
prise that they were friends and in
fact seemed to be pals of the new
Corners. Almost Immediately the sus-
picion came into my mind that these
five fellows were train robbers.
"Watching for an opportunity, l
soon found the conductor and in him l
confided my suspicious. He looked
grave and thoughtful and told me that
he had not made trip for several
months but what he expected to meet
Wild Horse Charley's gang, then oper-
ating in northern Texas. He communi-
Gated his fears to the train conductor
who only laughed at him. But he nor
1 were to be laughed out of our almost
certain conviction that we had aboard
gang of robbers, and l need scarcely
add, we both kept a pretty close watch
on them, but without making it appear
that we were doing so.
"Night was coming on and with the
increasing darkness, my nervousness
increased. 1 knew that if on time we
would reach Tyler, Texas, between
midnight and morning, and L hoped
we would reach there without molesta
tion and at which place 1 intended
leaving the train, although my ticket
read to Houston. We had warned the
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