The Washington herald., 1920-09-05
CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE

his head. That settled every
thing like resistance from that d.
rection.
BY this time all my nervousness
was gone. i felt kind of pleas-
ant excitement as II / were at
dance or a frolic of some sort.
The lights were all out In the
coaches, and. ass Tom and Ike
gradually quit firing and yelling,
1t got to be almost as still as a
graveyard. / remember hearing
a little bird chirping in a bush at
the side of the track, as IL it were
complaining at being walked up.
l made the fireman get a lam
tern, and then / went to the ex-
press car and yelled to the mes
senger to open up or get perforat-
ed He slid the door back and
stood in IL with his hands up.
Jump overheard, son." 1 said, and
he hit the dirt like a lump of lead.
There were two safes in the car
a big one and a little one. BY the
way. i first located the messen-
gers arsenal-a double barreIed
shotgun with buckshot cartridges
and thirty eight in a drawer Il
oIt" tue from the SnO1-
gun. pocketed the pistol, and call
ed the messenger inside. showed
my gun against his nose and put
him to work. He couldn't open
the big safe, but he did the little
one. There was only nine hun
dred dollars in it. That was
mighty small winnings for our
trouble, so we decided to go
through the passengers. We took
our prisoners to the smoking car.
and from there sent the engineer
through tthe train to light up the
coaches. Beginning with the first
one. We placed a man at each door
and ordered the passengers to
stand between the seats with their
hands up.
If you want to find out what
towards the majority of men are,
all you have to do is rob a passen-
ger train. / don't mean because
they don't resist-TIl tell you
later on why they can't do that
but it makes a man feel sorry for
them the way they lose their
heads. Big, burly drummers and
farmers and eX-sOldiers and high
collared dudes and sports that, a
few moments before. were filling
the car with noise and Dragging,
get so scared that their ears flop.
There were very few people in
the day coaches at that time of
night, so we made a slim haul
until we got to the sleeper. The
Pullman conductor met me at one
door while Jim was going round
nth
ly informed me that / could not go
into that car, as it did not belong
to the railroad company. and. be-
sides, the passengers had already
been greatly disturbed by the
shouting and firing. Never in all
my life have l met with a finer
instance of official dignity and
reliance upon the power OF Mr..
Pullman's great name. l jabbed
my siX-shooter so hard against
Mr.. Conductors front that l after
ward found one of his vest but
tons so firmly wedged in the end
OF the barrel that l had to shoot
it oct. He just shut up like a
weak-springed knife and rolled
down the car steps.
| opened the door of the sleeper
and stepped inside. 4 big. fat
old man came wabbling up to me.
putting and blowing. He had one
coat-sleeve on and was trying to
put his vest on over that. l don't
know who he thought l was.
Young man. young man." says
he, you must keep cool and not
get excited. Above everything,
keep cool"
Il can't" says l. "EXCitement's
just eating me up" And then l
let out a yell and turned loose my
forty-fve through the skylight.
That old man tried to dive into
one of the lower berths, but
sCreech came out of 1t and a bare
foot that took him in the bread
basket and landed him on the
floor. l saw Jim coming in the
other door. and l hollered for cv-
erybody to climb out and line up.
They commenced to scramble
down. and for while we had A
three-ringed circus. The men
looked as frightened and tame as
a lot of rabbits in a deep snow.
They had on, on an average, about
a quarter of a suit of clothes and
one shoe apiece. One chap was
sitting on the floor of the aisle,
looking as if he were working a
hard sum in arithmetic. He was
trying, very solemn. to pull a
lady's number two shoe on his
number nine foot.
The ladies didn't stop to dress.