The Springfield herald., 1912-09-13
NED oRMssY's YARN.

"The Forbes gang of counterfeit
ers," said Ned Ormsby, was without
doubt the greatest gang in Their spe-
cialty ever got together. The gang,
as 1t was at first made up. consisted
Sam Stetson. Curley Peters and my
self. We were all in the same Georgia
regiment, and enlisted in Atlanta. ex-
pecting to go through until the end
of the war, which 1t was considered in
the south would not be very far of.
I'VE kept banging away with guns
for couple of years and got pretty
sick Of 1t. The scraps we got into
were not such jokes as we had i'm
aginsd they would be. The Yankees,
who. We had thought, would be soft
marks for the southern gentlemen.
turned out to be dandy fighters. Be
sloes. ensso was no n.s.sy IN war, as
1t was being carried on. Forbes told
us one day that he was going to quit
This hit us all just right and We quit
with him.
Z did not know that Forbes had
any purpose In giving up war as a
profession until we got well clear of
the lines. We were not deserters, be-
cause We had all served for a longer
time than our enlistment called for.
We went on the bum for few weeks.
and then Forbes gave out the scheme
that he had been studying over for a
long time. This was nothing less than
to flood the south with bogus counter
felt Confederate notes. He believed
that the south would be successful,
and that We would not have any diff
ficulty in rolling in millions Of dollars.
The game looked like cinch and we
did get up stock OF bills represent
ing enough money to buy small
state, when the Confederates won
their final battle. but the cinch turned
out to be tainted with foolishness. and
We were badly left in the end.
Our glorious scheme was knocked
to smithereens when Lee surrendered
The whole gang went north with a
pretty large-sized stock of property.
which we disposed of at good prices.
We came out pretty large winners. but
1t made us sick when We thought of
what 1t might have been.
I'VE reached New York in the
course of our travels, and everything
seemed to be booming. Everybody
had money to burn, and We jumped
in to get some OF it. Forbes put up
job to get possession of several gov.
ernment printing plates. The job
would have been successful if Little
Jack Vaughn. who was as clever an
III,
for the state. hadn't got drunk in
Washington and given enough of the
snap away to throw US down. Forbes
was the maddest man you ever saw
when he heard of Vaughn's fool trick.
and he hunted for Little Jack for a
month for the purpose of killing him.
Vaughn kept out of the way until
Forbes got cooled off, and then he
Joined the rest of the gang.
But you could not keep Forbes
down with a few little setbacks, and
1t did not take him long to get on the
move again. He hired a house In Flat
bush, L. l. 1t was in the outskirts of
the village. and we all went there to
live. There had to be some excuse
for a lot of men living In a house
with couple of negro servants, SO
we had a sign painted and hung out
near the front gate, inscribed. Eure-
ka Club In order to stop suspicion
we invited several of the influential
citizens to dine with us. and we treat
ed them like lords. They would
swear by us through thick ard thin.
We were all the time quietly perfect
ing our counterfeiting plant. -Curley
Peters, who was a photographer. and
Sam Stetson, an engraver, were kept
busily at work getting out the plates.
They had some new trick that they
were experimenting on for long
while, and. after lot of failures,
they found what they were after.
Plates were made for the bills of a
dozen or more banks. and Forbes.
who was a good Judge. said that they
were the finest plates ever used to
stamp bogus money. Peters was
very reticent about the way the plates
were made and. as 1t was none of
our business, we didn't care. Taken at
the very worst, Peters was only a