The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-01-04
WON THE DAY WITH EMPTY GUN.
A HOld-up That Failed 10 Succeed.
HIS Wife Had Taken the Carr

Hold-up That Failed 20 Succeed.
His Wife Had Taken the Car
tridges.
From the New Orleans Times-Democrat.
stephen Crane says somewhere in q
short story" remarked a Western man
at one of the hotels last evening, that
shipwrecks would lose half their terrors
il folks could go into training for them
In advance. The same thing applied to
hold-ups. either of trains or stages They
take everybody by surprise. and no mat
ter how brave man may be he hesitates
ABOUT making a stand for fear he will re-
ceive no support from the others. That
is why there is usually such total lack
of resistance. Every railroad train OF
the slightest consequence carries a crew
of from six to ten men, including con-
ductors, brakemen and porters, and IL
they were prepared to act with anything
like intelligent concert they ought to be
able to stand off the strongest gang Of
ruffians that ever stopped an engine But
they are as much at skies and sevens as
the passengers themselves, and many a
brave fellow has thrown away his life in
making an individual fight which VS.
simply equivalent to suicide.
I'm my opinion every train crew ought
to be put through a regular robbers
drill just as stage hands in a theater
are put through a fire drill. for cases Of
emergency. Then each man would know
exactly what to do at the first alarm. and
such an organ zed resistance could be Of
fered that a successful hold-up would
be altogether out of the question. The
robbers always count upon taking their
victims by surprise and the mere knowl-
edge that the roads had adopted some
such precaution, / suggest, would have
a highly demoralizing effect on the train
looting industry in general. / doubt
whether anybody would have the hardi-
hood to engage in 1t.
THE fact that a determined stand is
all that is needed" continued the West
ern man. was illustrated a good many
years ago by a peculiar little incident
which took place on the old stage line
running out of Tombstone, Ariz Hold
ups used to be frequent on that route;
but strange to say. nobody took any pre-
cautions against such contingency. One
day the stage was carrying an unusual
number of passengers and while II was
going over an extremely desolate section
OF the road a masked man stepped from
behind a rock, leveled a shotgun at the
driver and ordered him to pull up He
'obeyed at once, and the robber began
the usual programme by telling every
body to get out and range themselves in
line WIN their ndHuS ABOVE lneir nedQE.
There were several nervy men on top,
but none of them cared to court sudden
death by taking the initiative. and II was
impossible, moreover. 10 say how many
additional ruffians might be lurking be-
hind the rocks.
AT any rate. all hands were Chamber
ing down, when suddenly the door of the
stage was flung violently open and out
leaped a big; herce-looking man with
cooked revolver in each fist At tl-s sight
of him the robber took an involuntary
backward step and fell sprawling over a
round stone. Both barrels of his gun
went off IN the air and I'm the confusion
he picked himself up and ran like a deer
for cover. He had a horse on the other
side of the rocks, and in less time than
II takes to tell II ne was in the saddle
and burning the wind across the prairie.
He got away. and now comes the funny
part Of the story While the robber was
beating his retreat the big man snapped
both pistols Intellectually at least half
a dozen times, and then discovered to
his blank amazement that neither one OF
them was loaded. He was glaring dumb
founded into the empty cylinders when his
wife stuck her head out Of the coach and
burst into vociferous weeping. oh! john.
she sobbed, I took the cartridges out OF
them guns this morning and forgot to tell
you about it, AS she spoke she held
out a handful OF brass shells. What the
- - did you do that for me reared
1T was skeered that they might go on IN
the coach and shoot the baby. Boos hooi
hoog' she replied.