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The Great K. & A. Robbery
THE GREAT
K. & A. TRAIN-ROBBERY
[Illustration: Frontispiece]
The Great K. & A. Robbery
[Illustration: Trains]
By
Paul Leicester Ford
Author of The Honorable Peter Stirling
New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1897
_Copyright, 1896,_ BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
_Copyright, 1897,_ BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY.
University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
TO
MY TRAVELLING COMPANIONS
ON SPECIALS 218 AND 97
THIS ENDEAVOR TO WEAVE INTO A STORY SOME OF OUR OVERLAND HAPPENINGS
AND ADVENTURES
IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
* * * * *
_TO MISS GEORGE BARKER GIBBS._
_My dear George_:
_At your request I originally inscribed this skit to our whole party.
In its republication, however, I can but feel that the dedication
should be more particular. Written because you asked it, first read
aloud to beguile our ride across the great American desert, and
finally printed because you wished a copy as a souvenir of our
journeyings, no one can so naturally be called upon to stand sponsor
to the little tale. Should the story but give its readers a fraction
of the pleasure I owe to your kindness, its success is assured._
_Faithfully yours,_
_PAUL LEICESTER FORD._
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE PARTY ON SPECIAL NO. 218 1
II THE HOLDING-UP OF OVERLAND NO. 3 17
III A NIGHT'S WORK ON THE ALKALI PLAINS 30
IV SOME RATHER QUEER ROAD AGENTS 43
V A TRIP TO THE GRAND CANYON 55
VI THE HAPPENINGS DOWN HANCE'S TRAIL 69
VII A CHANGE OF BASE 82
VIII HOW DID THE SECRET LEAK OUT? 93
IX A TALK BEFORE BREAKFAST 107
X WAITING FOR HELP 118
XI THE LETTERS CHANGE HANDS AGAIN 130
XII AN EVENING IN JAIL 140
XIII A LESSON IN POLITENESS 153
XIV "LISTENERS NEVER HEAR ANYTHING GOOD" 165
XV THE SURRENDER OF THE LETTERS 175
XVI A GLOOMY GOOD-BY 186
THE
Great K. & A. Train-Robbery
CHAPTER I
THE PARTY ON SPECIAL NO. 218
Any one who hopes to find in what is here written a work of literature
had better lay it aside unread. At Yale I should have got the sack in
rhetoric and English composition, let alone other studies, had it not
been for the fact that I played half-back on the team, and so the
professors marked me away up above where I ought to have ranked. That
was twelve years ago, but my life since I received my parchment has
hardly been of a kind to improve me in either style or grammar. It is
true that one woman tells me I write well, and my directors never find
fault with my compositions; but I know that she likes my letters
because, whatever else they may say to her, they always say in some
form, "I love you," while my board approve my annual reports because
thus far I have been able to end each with "I recommend the
declaration of a dividend of -- per cent from the earnings of the
current year." I should therefore prefer to reserve my writings for
such friendly critics, if it did not seem necessary to make public a
plain statement concerning an affair over which there appears to be
much confusion. I have heard in the last five years not less than
twenty renderings of what is commonly called "the great K. & A.
train-robbery,"--some so twisted and distorted that but for the
intermediate versions I should never have recognized them as attempts
to narrate the series of events in which I played a somewhat prominent
part. I have read or been told that, unassisted, the pseudo-hero
captured a dozen desperadoes; that he was one of the road agents
himself; that he was saved from lynching only by the timely arrival of
cavalry; that the action of the United States government in rescuing
him from the civil authorities was a most high-handed interference
with State rights; that he received his reward from a grateful
railroad by being promoted; that a lovely woman as recompense for his
villany--but bother! it's my business to tell what really occurred,
and not what the world chooses to invent. And if any man thinks he
would have done otherwise in my position, I can only say that he is a
better or a worse man than Dick Gordon.
Primarily, it was football which shaped my end. Owing to my skill in
the game, I took a post-graduate at the Sheffield Scientific School,
that the team might have my services for an extra two years. That led
to my knowing a little about mechanical engineering, and when I left
the "quad" for good I went into the Alton Railroad shops. It wasn't
long before I was foreman of a section; next I became a division
superintendent, and after I had stuck to that for a time I was
appointed superintendent of the Kansas & Arizona Railroad, a line
extending from Trinidad in Kansas to The Needles in Arizona, tapping
the Missouri Western System at the first place, and the Great Southern
at the other. With both lines we had important traffic agreements, as
well as the closest relations, which sometimes were a little
difficult, as the two roads were anything but friendly, and we had
directors of each on the K. & A. board, in which they fought like
cats. Indeed, it could only be a question of time when one would oust
the other and then absorb my road. My head-quarters were at
Albuquerque, in New Mexico, and it was there, in October, 1890, that I
received the communication which was the beginning of all that
followed.
This initial factor was a letter from the president of the Missouri
Western, telling me that their first vice-president, Mr. Cullen (who
was also a director of my road), was coming out to attend the annual
election of the K. & A., which under our charter had to be held in Ash
Forks, Arizona. A second paragraph told me that Mr. Cullen's family
accompanied him, and that they all wished to visit the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado on their way. Finally the president wrote that the party
travelled in his own private car, and asked me to make myself
generally useful to them. Having become quite hardened to just such
demands, at the proper date I ordered my superintendent's car on to
No. 2, and the next morning it was dropped off at Trinidad.
The moment No. 3 arrived, I climbed into the president's special, that
was the last car on the train, and introduced myself to Mr. Cullen,
whom, though an official of my road, I had never met. He seemed
surprised at my presence, but greeted me very pleasantly as soon as I
explained that the Missouri Western office had asked me to do what I
could for him, and that I was there for that purpose. His party were
about to sit down to breakfast, and he asked me to join them: so we
passed into the dining-room at the forward end of the car, where I was
introduced to "My son," "Lord Ralles," and "Captain Ackland." The son
was a junior copy of his father, tall and fine-looking, but, in place
of the frank and easy manner of his sire, he was so very English that
most people would have sworn falsely as to his native land. Lord
Ralles was a little, well-built chap, not half so English as Albert
Cullen, quick in manner and thought, being in this the opposite of his
brother Captain Ackland, who was heavy enough to rock-ballast a
road-bed. Both brothers gave me the impression of being gentlemen, and
both were decidedly good-looking.
After the introductions, Mr. Cullen said we would not wait, and his
remark called my attention to the fact that there was one more place
at the table than there were people assembled. I had barely noted
this, when my host said, "Here's the truant," and, turning, I faced a
lady who had just entered. Mr. Cullen said, "Madge, let me introduce
Mr. Gordon to you." My bow was made to a girl of about twenty, with
light brown hair, the bluest of eyes, a fresh skin, and a fine figure,
dressed so nattily as to be to me, after my four years of Western
life, a sight for tired eyes. She greeted me pleasantly, made a neat
little apology for having kept us waiting, and then we all sat down.
It was a very jolly breakfast-table, Mr. Cullen and his son being
capital talkers, and Lord Ralles a good third, while Miss Cullen was
quick and clever enough to match the three. Before the meal was over I
came to the conclusion that Lord Ralles was in love with Miss Cullen,
for he kept making low asides to her; and from the fact that she
allowed them, and indeed responded, I drew the conclusion that he was
a lucky beggar, feeling, I confess, a little pang that a title was
going to win such a nice American girl.
One of the first subjects spoken of was train-robbery, and Miss
Cullen, like most Easterners, seemed to take a great interest in it,
and had any quantity of questions to ask me.
"I've left all my jewelry behind, except my watch," she said, "and
that I hide every night. So I really hope we'll be held up, it would
be such an adventure."
"There isn't any chance of it, Miss Cullen," I told her; "and if we
were, you probably wouldn't even know that it was happening, but would
sleep right through it."
"Wouldn't they try to get our money and our watches?" she demanded.
I told her no, and explained that the express- and mail-cars were the
only ones to which the road agents paid any attention. She wanted to
know the way it was done: so I described to her how sometimes the
train was flagged by a danger signal, and when it had slowed down the
runner found himself covered by armed men; or how a gang would board
the train, one by one, at way stations, and then, when the time came,
steal forward, secure the express agent and postal clerk, climb over
the tender, and compel the runner to stop the train at some lonely
spot on the road. She made me tell her all the details of such
robberies as I knew about, and, though I had never been concerned in
any, I was able to describe several, which, as they were monotonously
alike, I confess I colored up a bit here and there, in an attempt to
make them interesting to her. I seemed to succeed, for she kept the
subject going even after we had left the table and were smoking our
cigars in the observation saloon. Lord Ralles had a lot to say about
the American lack of courage in letting trains containing twenty and
thirty men be held up by half a dozen robbers.
"Why," he ejaculated, "my brother and I each have a double express
with us, and do you think we'd sit still in our seats? No. Hang me if
we wouldn't pot something."
"You might," I laughed, a little nettled, I confess, by his speech,
"but I'm afraid it would be yourselves."
"Aw, you fancy resistance impossible?" drawled Albert Cullen.
"It has been tried," I answered, "and without success. You can see
it's like all surprises. One side is prepared before the other side
knows there is danger. Without regard to relative numbers, the odds
are all in favor of the road agents."
"But I wouldn't sit still, whatever the odds," asserted his lordship.
"And no Englishman would."
"Well, Lord Ralles," I said, "I hope for your sake, then, that you'll
never be in a hold-up, for I should feel about you as the runner of a
locomotive did when the old lady asked him if it wasn't very painful
to him to run over people. 'Yes, madam,' he sadly replied: 'there is
nothing musses an engine up so.'"
I don't think Miss Cullen liked Lord Ralles's comments on American
courage any better than I did, for she said,--
"Can't you take Lord Ralles and Captain Ackland into the service of
the K. & A., Mr. Gordon, as a special guard?"
"The K. & A. has never had a robbery yet, Miss Cullen," I replied,
"and I don't think that it ever will have."
"Why not?" she asked.
I explained to her how the Canyon of the Colorado to the north, and
the distance of the Mexican border to the south, made escape so almost
desperate that the road agents preferred to devote their attentions to
other routes. "If we were boarded, Miss Cullen," I said, "your jewelry
would be as safe as it is in Chicago, for the robbers would only clean
out the express- and mail-cars; but if they should so far forget their
manners as to take your trinkets, I'd agree to return them to you
inside of one week."
"That makes it all the jollier," she cried, eagerly. "We could have
the fun of the adventure, and yet not lose anything. Can't you arrange
for it, Mr. Gordon?"
"I'd like to please you, Miss Cullen," I said, "and I'd like to give
Lord Ralles a chance to show us how to handle those gentry; but it's
not to be done." I really should have been glad to have the road
agents pay us a call.
We spent that day pulling up the Raton pass, and so on over the
Glorietta pass down to Lamy, where, as the party wanted to see Santa
Fe, I had our two cars dropped off the overland, and we ran up the
branch line to the old Mexican city. It was well-worn ground to me,
but I enjoyed showing the sights to Miss Cullen, for by that time I
had come to the conclusion that I had never met a sweeter or jollier
girl. Her beauty, too, was of a kind that kept growing on one, and
before I had known her twenty-four hours, without quite being in love
with her, I was beginning to hate Lord Ralles, which was about the
same thing, I suppose. Every hour convinced me that the two understood
each other, not merely from the little asides and confidences they
kept exchanging, but even more so from the way Miss Cullen would take
his lordship down occasionally. Yet, like a fool, the more I saw to
confirm my first diagnosis, the more I found myself dwelling on the
dimples at the corners of Miss Cullen's mouth, the bewitching uplift
of her upper lip, the runaway curls about her neck, and the curves and
color of her cheeks.
Half a day served to see everything in Santa Fe worth looking at, but
Mr. Cullen decided to spend there the time they had to wait for his
other son to join the party. To pass the hours, I hunted up some
ponies, and we spent three days in long rides up the old Santa Fe
trail and to the outlying mountains. Only one incident was other than
pleasant, and that was my fault. As we were riding back to our cars on
the second afternoon, we had to cross the branch road-bed, where a
gang happened to be at work tamping the ties.
"Since you're interested in road agents, Miss Cullen," I said, "you
may like to see one. That fellow standing in the ditch is Jack Drute,
who was concerned in the D. & R. G. hold-up three years ago."
Miss Cullen looked where I pointed, and seeing a man with a gun, gave
a startled jump, and pulled up her pony, evidently supposing that we
were about to be attacked. "Sha'n't we run?" she began, but then
checked herself, as she took in the facts of the drab clothes of the
gang and the two armed men in uniform. "They are convicts?" she asked,
and when I nodded, she said, "Poor things!" After a pause, she asked,
"How long is he in prison for?"
"Twenty years," I told her.
"How harsh that seems!" she said. "How cruel we are to people for a
few moments' wrong-doing, which the circumstances may almost have
justified!" She checked her pony as we came opposite Drute, and said,
"Can you use money?"
"Can I, lyedy?" said the fellow, leering in an attempt to look
amiable. "Wish I had the chance to try."
The guard interrupted by telling her it wasn't permitted to speak to
the convicts while out of bounds, and so we had to ride on. All Miss
Cullen was able to do was to throw him a little bunch of flowers she
had gathered in the mountains. It was literally casting pearls before
swine, for the fellow did not seem particularly pleased, and when,
late that night, I walked down there with a lantern I found the
flowers lying in the ditch. The experience seemed to sadden and
distress Miss Cullen very much for the rest of the afternoon, and I
kicked myself for having called her attention to the brute, and could
have knocked him down for the way he had looked at her. It is curious
that I felt thankful at the time that Drute was not holding up a train
Miss Cullen was on. It is always the unexpected that happens. If I
could have looked into the future, what a strange variation on this
thought I should have seen!
The three days went all too quickly, thanks to Miss Cullen, and by the
end of that time I began to understand what love really meant to a
chap, and how men could come to kill each other for it. For a fairly
sensible, hard-headed fellow it was pretty quick work, I acknowledge;
but let any man have seven years of Western life without seeing a
woman worth speaking of, and then meet Miss Cullen, and if he didn't
do as I did, I wouldn't trust him on the tail-board of a locomotive,
for I should put him down as defective both in eyesight and in
intellect.