Indiana daily times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1914-1922, 1921-08-13

Cimarron, and that it vas q question Of
| only a few hours when they would be
| dead men or prisoners. While I was
reading that article l was sitting at
( breakfast in one Of the most elegant pri-
vate residences in Washington city with
a funky in knee pants standing behind
my chair. Jim was sitting across the
table talking TO his half uncle, retired
naval officer, whose name you have often
seen IN the accounts of doings in the
/ capital We had gone there and bought
rafting outfits Of good clothes and were
resting from our labors among the
! Dabobs. We must have been killed in
| that mesquite thicket, for l can make an
affidavit that we didn't surrender.
Now propose TO tell why 1t Is easy
20 h9ld Up a train. and, then. why no
one should ever do L
In the first place, the attacking party
mas all the advantage. that is, Of
course supposing that they are olddmers
with the necessary experience and cour-
age. They have the outside and are pro-
tected by the darkness, while the others
are IN the light, hemmed into a small
space, and exposed, the moment they
| snow a head at window or door, to the
aim Of a man who is a dead shot and
who won't hesitate 10 shoot.
But, in my opinion. the main condl-
ton that makes train robbing easy is
the element Of surprise IN connection with
tne imagination of the passengers IF
you have ever Seen horse that has eaten
/ loco weed you will understand what I
, mean when l say that the passengers get
loeoed. That horse gets the awfulest
imagination on him In the world. You
can't coax him TO cross q little branch
stream two feet wide. II looks as big
TO him as the Mississippi River. That's
Just the way with the passenger. He
thinks there are q hundred men yelling
and shooting outside. when maybe there
are only tive or three, And the 1uzzle OF
a -fr-~ rs k--er q,
tunnel The passenger is all right, al
though he may do mean little tricks like
hiding wad OF money in his shoe and
forgetting Ia dig up until you lostle his
ribs some with the end Of your SIX
shooter; but there's no harm In him
AS to the train crew. We never had
any more trouble with them than IL they
had been so many sheep. l don't mean
that they are towards; mean that they
up against a bluff It's the same way
with the officers. I've seen secret serv-
Ice men, marshals. and railroad detectives
fork over their change as meek IS Moses.
| saw one OF the bravest marshals ] ever
knew hide his gun under his seat and dig
MP along with the rest while l was TAX
ing toll. He wasn't afraid; he simply
knew that We had the drop on the whole
outfit Besides. many of those officers
have families and they feel that they
oughtnt to take chances whereas death
has no terrors for the men who holds up
a train. He expects to get killed some
day. end he generally does. My advice 10
you, if you should ever be in a hold-up,
is to line up with the towards and save
your bravery for an occas sion when ii NAV
be of some benefit to you. Another rea-
son why officers are backward about
mixing things with train robber is
financial one. Every time there is
scrlmmage and somebody gets killed, the
officers lose money. If the train rObber
gets away they swear out a warrant
against John Doe ct al and travel hun
n gnA- a .
thousands on the trail Of the fugitives
and the Government foots the bills. So
with them, 1t Is a question OF mileage
rather than courage.
l will give one instance to support my
statement that the surprise is the best
card in playing for hold-up.
Along In 90 the Daltons were cutting
out hot trail for the officers. down in