"I am John B. Sweeney," he said, "What do you want with me?"
I answered him by saying, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Sweeney, but is that
gun loaded that you have pointed at me?"
He laughed and replied, "What the h--l do you think I would be doing
with this gun if it were not loaded?"
"Well," I said, "if that gun is loaded I wish you would turn the muzzle
of it in some other direction. That horse that I have down there is one
that I borrowed from the livery man at Vinita to ride over here on, and
if that gun would accidentally go off it might scare the horse and cause
him to break loose or maybe hurt me. If the horse got away I would have
a lot of trouble catching him, and if I did not catch him the livery man
would make trouble for me. Furthermore, I did not come over here anyway
to get shot. If I had expected there would be any shooting I wouldn't
have come."
"What did you come here for?" asked Sweeney.
I said, "Col. Eddy, General Manager of the M. K. & T. road, went south
last night, passing Vinita on his special train (said this, knowing that
Sweeney had been standing on the platform when the Colonel's train had
passed) and he wired me from Eufaula, in a cipher, to come out here and
see John B. Sweeney and ask him to come over to Vinita and meet him on
his return north to Parsons. He said in the message that he expected to
arrive at Vinita about eleven-thirty today, and that he wanted to have a
private talk with you to arrange with him for your services in assisting
in the capture of the parties implicated in the holdup that occurred at
Vinita a few days before. If you are Mr. Sweeney, and will accompany me
back to Vinita we will just about have time, by starting soon, to reach
there before Col. Eddy's train arrives. The Colonel does not want the
people at Vinita to know that you have met him, as he has been led to
understand that the people of that town do not like you, so he will run
his train onto the siding about a quarter of a mile from Vinita, and we
can leave our horses at the livery stable and walk to the side track,
each of us taking different directions, and the people will know nothing
about your having met the Colonel."
Sweeney replied, "I know them fellows at Vinita are all afraid of me,
and if Col. Eddy will give me a job and pay me enough I will get those
train robbers for him. I will go with you."
He called his brother-in-law and said, "Go and put the saddle on Baldy."
Baldy was his horse. He turned to me and said, "Come up and take a seat
here on the porch while I go up and get ready to go with you."
He took his rifle and went upstairs. I took the seat he had previously
occupied on the porch, to await his coming. I asked his sister to please
give me a drink of water. I was terribly thirsty, caused, no doubt, by
looking into the barrel of that Winchester. I had only been seated a few
moments when Sweeney appeared in the doorway carrying in his left hand
his nine-inch .45 six-shooter, Colts, and in his shirt sleeves. He had
left the Winchester in the house. He said to me in a commanding voice,
"You have found the way out here, and now you can get on your horse and
lead the way back."
While he was speaking the brother-in-law brought the horse around,
Sweeney mounted it and I let down the bars. He motioned me to lead the
way, which I did. He rode up close behind me, carrying his gun in his
left hand, and continuously telling about how he had practiced shooting
with the James gang while they had been camping near his home, and that
he had beaten them. He also pointed out a clump of bushes in which he
said the gang had camped during the several days that they had been in
that neighborhood. After we had left the covered ground and come out
onto the prairie I told Sweeney that I occupied the corner room in the
hotel at Vinita the night before. I said, "I have not settled my bill
and my grip is still in the room, and I think we had better ride to the
livery stable and leave our horses, and you had better go to my room
direct, and I will go from the stable to the telegraph office and find
out from the operator where Col. Eddy's special train is and at what
time it will arrive at Vinita. I am getting hungry and if I find that we
have time to get something to eat before the special arrives, I will
order something. I will come direct to the room and tell you what I have
learned."
We separated, Sweeney going to the hotel and I, apparently, going to the
telegraph office, which was in the opposite direction to that taken by
Sweeney. I did not stop at the telegraph office, but went around back of
it, placing some buildings between Sweeney and myself. I crossed the
street at a point west of the depot and went around to the rear of the
hotel, where there was a flight of stairs leading from the back yard to
the second floor of the hotel from the outside. I ascended these stairs
and went to my room, where I found the door standing about half way open
and could see, through a crack between the door and the jamb Sweeney
lying down on my bed with his hat, boots and spurs on. He was taking
things easy. I entered noiselessly, holding a small, double-barrel,
Remington derringer that I had taken from my pocket as I entered the
room. I was whistling, and suddenly thrust the derringer into Mr.
Sweeney's mouth, breaking two of his upper teeth loose. I told him to
throw up his hands, and he was not long in obeying. With my left hand I
unbuckled his belt and removed it from him. It contained the holster in
which he had placed the nine-inch Colts.
Bonnell had noticed us when we arrived, and when we separated and as I
crossed the street going to the hotel I gave him a signal to follow me.
He entered the room just as I had disarmed Sweeney. I told him to put
handcuffs on the prisoner and to take him to the calaboose and lock him
up. I had Sweeney's meals sent to the lock-up.
When the next train arrived there, who should be on it but Capt. Sam
Sixkiller, who had left his sick bed and come up to Vinita to assist me
in making the arrest. He told me, on his arrival, that it would not do
to take Sweeney through Muskogee, as the railroad men there were aroused
and would undoubtedly attempt violence, for they had all come to the
conclusion that Sweeney was a fraud and was the man who shot Conductor
Warner. Warner was very popular among the employes of the road. So we
boarded the north-bound train and brought Sweeney to St. Louis,
transferring there to the Iron Mountain for Little Rock, Arkansas. Here
we changed cars for the Fort Smith and Little Rock Road, and thus
reached Fort Smith, Arkansas, in safety with our prisoner and without
any interference from the railroad men.
Sweeney never uttered a word from the time I disarmed him until we had
boarded the train for St. Louis and were probably twenty miles north of
Vinita. We were in the smoking car, Capt. Sixkiller and the prisoner
ahead and I in a seat just behind them, when finally Sweeney turned his
head around towards me and said, "Mr. Foster, I wish you would please
show me that gun you stuck into my mouth."
I took the cartridges out of the gun and handed it to him. It was not
more than five inches in length and of .41 calibre. He examined it
critically, and without turning his head handed it back to me over his
shoulder, saying in a disgusted manner, "H--l, I thought that gun was a
foot long."
We lodged him in jail at Fort Smith in due time. He was indicted and
finally tried, but, because I was never able to find out who the unknown
farmhand was that he had killed and the motive for the crime, he was
acquitted. However, he had lain in jail for nearly a year, and on his
release he returned at once to Clay County, Missouri, and wrote a letter
to A. A. Talmage, then General Manager of the Missouri Pacific,
demanding that Mr. Talmage send him ten thousand dollars immediately,
and threatening that if he did not that he would blow up the bridge on
the Wabash Railroad and destroy property in general, and in any event he
would kill Furlong on sight. He sent this letter through the United
States mail. Mr. Talmage gave the letter to me, and I at once made a
complaint to the United States commissioner, got a warrant for Sweeney's
arrest and went to his father's farm near Missouri City, Clay County,
accompanied by a deputy sheriff, whose name I don't remember, but who
was a brave and splendid officer. Sweeney was at home. It was after
night and he had gone to bed. We rapped for admission and the door was
opened by his father, to whom we stated that we were officers and had a
warrant for the arrest of his son, "Barney." The latter was in bed
upstairs, but heard us when we rapped for admission and had come to the
head of the stairs with a shot-gun in his hand. He said, "I am here and
I will kill any man who attempts to come up those stairs."
In an instant, and before I had time to think, the deputy sheriff, who
had been standing beside me, sprang up the stairs. I followed him as
quickly as possible, but before I had reached the top the officer had
clinched with "Barney" and had thrown him to the floor. I picked up the
gun that Sweeney had let fall, and in less time than it takes to tell
it we had captured Mr. Sweeney without a shot being fired, so I feel
safe in saying that he was an arrant coward as well as an inexcusable
liar.
I took him to St. Louis, where he was tried and convicted for having
sent the threatening letter through the mail. He was sentenced to either
three or four years in the penitentiary. He served his time and again
returned to his father's home at Missouri City. A short time later he
held up and tried to rob a Wabash passenger train at Missouri City. In
this attempt he was shot through the ankle by a telegraph operator. He
tried to escape by running, but was captured by the train crew and the
company's telegraph operator at that city. He was tried for this offense
and sent to the penitentiary for fourteen years, and I had lost track of
him until he recently turned up in St. Louis as a witness against the
New York Life Insurance Company, in the famous Kimmel case. He claimed
to have visited the wilds of Oregon with Kimmel, a man named Johnson and
another party to search for some hidden treasure. A portion of the
treasure was found. A row over its division resulted and Johnson shot
and killed Kimmel. Sweeney avenged Kimmel's death by killing Johnson on
the spot. Both of the dead men were buried near where they fell. On
reading Sweeney's story in the papers, which was almost a repetition of
the story of the fake hold-up down in the territory, as related to the
express officials and myself, I will admit I really sympathized with the
attorney who had gone to the trouble and expense of getting Sweeney
here, knowing, as I did, that he was absolutely untruthful and
unreliable.
I do not believe that I ever ran into as fun-loving a bunch of
railroaders as the one which attended Sweeney's trial. Ft. Smith was
crowded, as was usually the case when court was in session. At that time
there was only one "leading" hotel in town. It was a three-story,
old-fashioned structure, the top story of which was one large room, or
hall. Social functions, such as balls and other gatherings, were usually
held in this hall. When the railroad men arrived--there were about
fifteen of them, including "Chick" Warner, Ed Smith, W. B. Maxwell,
"Lute" Welch and Tom Hall, all passenger conductors on the Katy--all of
the regular rooms had been taken. The proprietor, in order to take care
of the boys as best he could, turned this large room, or hall, into a
dormitory, placing therein several different kinds of beds and cots for
them to sleep on. A large round table and a few rickety old chairs
constituted the balance of the furnishings of the room. There was not
much doing in the amusement line after dark in Ft. Smith in those days,
so the railroaders retired to their rooms early--but not to sleep. The
first seven or eight up the stairs, and there was always a race to see
who would get upstairs first, would assemble themselves around the table
and soon be busy playing a game of--well, there is no need of me naming
it, as everybody knows the name of the game that usually interests the
average railroad man most. I will add, however, that there was no
"limit." By and by, those who were lucky enough to have to "sit out"
would get sleepy and roll into their bed or cot, but they did not have a
chance to get to sleep, the "I'll pass" or "I'll raise you" of the
players keeping them awake until the game would break up, which was
usually about the time the sun commenced to shine in at the windows in
the early morning. The players would then retire and soon be snoring to
beat the band. "Chick" Warner being a big, deep-chested man, had all his
competitors skinned a mile at this snoring game. As soon as he hit the
bed his snoring machinery would get in motion. Then the real fun would
begin. The balance of the gang would throw pillows, or shoes, or any old
thing they could find at his head to wake him up. These efforts would
not always be successful, however, and the snore would either increase
in tone or volume.
At the breakfast table one morning, after there had been an unusually
long "sitting" the gang decided to get even with "Chick" Warner, who was
still in bed, by holding an old-fashioned Irish wake at his bedside.
Charlie Walters, an express company route agent, who was an artist of no
mean ability, procured a piece of chalk and in less time than it takes
to tell it, had transformed the head of the bed into a monument with
very appropriate inscriptions thereon. Some lumber was secured and a
fence arranged around the bed, on which were placed a lot of empty beer
bottles. A candle was placed in the neck of each bottle, and after these
were lighted and the windows darkened, the bunch arranged themselves
around the "bier" and commenced a weird chant. The noise made by the
bunch attracted the attention of most of the people in the town, and the
big room was soon filled. News of what was going on soon reached the
court room and Judge Parker adjourned court and he and his officers and
the lawyers and jurors rushed to the hotel to witness the fun-making.
After an exceedingly loud and boisterous outburst of "grief" on the part
of the "mourners" Warner awoke. It did not take him long to break up
that "wake," as he at once began raising a rough house by throwing
everything he could get hold of at his tormentors. The affair was the
talk of the town for some time to come, and is to this day referred to
when two or three of the gang happen to get together.
On the Sunday following, the citizens of the town, to show their
appreciation of the bunch as good fellows, decided to give them a
carriage ride and show them the places of interest. Judge Parker, in his
private conveyance, was to lead the procession. As none of the vehicles
had been decorated, as some of the railroaders thought they should be,
they decided to do some decorating on their own hook. An empty beer keg
was procured and with a rope it was anchored to the rear axle of the
Judge's conveyance. As the Judge's abstemious habits were known to all
the citizens of the town, the sight of the beer keg under his buggy
created a great deal of amusement on the part of the citizens when they
saw it as the carriage was drawn through the streets. The Judge did not
discover the trick that had been played on him until after the ride was
over, but he seemed to enjoy the joke as much as did the jokers.