_"Old Hicks," a drunken Planter, is entertained by a
Hunting-party.--Lester's Landing.--Its Grocery-store and
Mysterious Merchants.--A dangerous Situation and a desperate
Encounter.--The unfortunate Escape of Two of the Robbers._
One of the most direct sources of information relative to the party was
found in the person of an old planter, named Hicks, who lived some
distance down the track of the railroad. He was in the habit of visiting
Union City very frequently, and he usually rounded off his day's
pleasure by becoming jovially drunk, in which condition he would start
for his home, walking down the railroad track. He had been in Union City
all of Friday before the robbery, and about ten o'clock in the evening
he was in a state of happy inebriety, ready to "hail fellow, well met,"
with any person he might encounter.
On his way home, about three-quarters of a mile west of Union City, he
saw a camp-fire burning a short distance from the track, and around it
were gathered five men. They hailed him, and asked him to take a drink;
and as this was an invitation which Hicks could not refuse, even from
the devil himself, he joined them, drank with them, and danced a
hornpipe for their edification. Hicks acknowledged in his account of
meeting them, that by the time they had made him dance for them, he was
heartily frightened at their looks and talk. He heard one of them say
that they wanted ten thousand at least, but he could not tell what the
remark referred to. He asked them why they were camping out, and one,
who seemed to be the leader of the party, said they were out hunting.
"Yes," continued another one, "I am out hunting for somebody's girl, and
when I find her we are going to run away together."
At this, they all laughed, as if there was some hidden meaning in his
words.
Hicks described all of the men, three of them quite minutely; but the
fourth was evidently the same as the second, and the fifth was lying
down asleep all the time, so that Hicks could not tell much about him.
They were armed with large navy revolvers, which they wore in belts, and
their clothing was quite good. The tall man, who seemed to be the
leader, related an account of a deer-hunt in which he had participated,
in Fayette county, Illinois, on the Kaskaskia river, and when he
mentioned the place, the others scowled and winked at him, as if to stop
him. Hicks said that they seemed to be familiar with Cincinnati,
Louisville, Evansville, and other northern cities, and that they talked
somewhat like Yankees. He remained with them until about midnight, when
a negro came down the track. Hicks and the negro then went on together
to Hicks's house, leaving the five men still camped in the woods.
Other persons reported having seen the same party in the same vicinity
several times before the night of the robbery, though some had seen only
two, others three and four; but no one, except Hicks, had seen five. The
accounts given by the persons near the train when the robbery occurred
did not show the presence of more than three persons, though possibly
there might have been a fourth. The descriptions of the suspected
parties were quite varied in some respects; yet the general tenor of
them was to the same effect, and, as no one knew who these persons were,
it was quite certain that this quartette of strangers had committed the
robbery.
In the case of the Moscow robbery, we had strongly suspected two
notorious thieves, named Jack Nelson and Miles Ogle, so that my first
action, on learning of this second affair in the same vicinity, was to
telegraph to my correspondents and agents throughout the country, to
learn whether either of these men had been seen lately. I could gain no
news whatever, except from St. Louis, whence an answer was returned to
the effect that Nelson was said to be stopping somewhere in the country
back of Hickman, Kentucky. Ogle's wife was in St. Louis, and she had
been seen by a detective walking and talking earnestly with a strange
man a short time previous. The information about Nelson was important,
since, if true, it showed that he was in the immediate neighborhood of
the points where the robberies had occurred. The man seen with Mrs. Ogle
might have been one of the party, sent by her husband to appoint a
future rendezvous. The description of the tall, dark man, mentioned by
Hicks and others, tallied very closely with Ogle's appearance. My son,
William, was well advised of these facts, and, as soon as he had
obtained the statements of every one acquainted with any of the
occurrences at the time of the robbery, he was ready for action.
His first inquiries were directed toward discovering where Nelson was
staying near Hickman, and he learned in a very short time that this
rumor had no truth in it. While making search for Nelson, however, he
heard of a low grocery-store at Lester's Landing, about twelve miles
below Hickman on the Mississippi River. The store was situated four
miles from any other house in a sparsely settled country, where the
amount of legitimate trade would hardly amount to twelve hundred dollars
per year. It was said to be the resort of a very low class of men, and
the proprietors passed for river gamblers.
On William's return to Union City from Hickman, he decided to make a
visit to this grocery-store to learn something about the men who
frequented it. Having none of his own men with him, he chose one of the
express company's detectives, named Patrick Connell, to accompany him,
and, on the last day of October, they started on horseback, with an old
resident named Bledsoe for a guide. On arriving at the house of a
well-to-do planter, named Wilson Merrick, they obtained considerable
information about the men who kept the store and the people who visited
it.
Mr. Merrick said that a man named John Wesley Lester kept a wood-yard on
the Mississippi, and the spot was called Lester's Landing. About three
or four months before, three men arrived there and obtained leave from
Lester to put up a store, which they stocked with groceries and whisky.
The men gave their names as J. H. Clark, Ed. J. Russell, and William
Barton, and they seemed to have some means, as the store did only a
limited business, except in whisky. They were all men of ability and
determination, and, as they were always well armed, the people of the
cane-brake country were rather afraid of them. Nothing positive was
known against them, but it was suspected from their looks and actions
that they were Northern desperadoes lying quiet for a time. They seemed
to be well acquainted in Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Memphis,
Vicksburg, and New Orleans, but they were careful never to give any hint
of their previous place of residence in the hearing of strangers. Mr.
Merrick had, however, heard Russell say that he had once run a
stationary engine in Missouri, and from occasional expressions by
Barton it would appear that the latter had once worked on a railroad in
some capacity. They dressed quite well, and treated strangers politely,
though not cordially. Although they were all three rather hard drinkers,
they never became intoxicated, and they seemed to understand each other
well enough not to quarrel among themselves. Clark was the oldest of the
party, but Russell seemed to be the leader, Barton being apparently
quite a young man. They stated that they intended to exchange groceries
for fish and game, and ship the latter articles to St. Louis and
Memphis.
From the description of the men, William began to suspect that they
formed a portion of the party of robbers, and he determined to push on
at once. He induced a young man named Gordon to go with him as guide and
to assist in making the arrest of these men, if he should deem it
advisable. By hard riding they succeeded in reaching Lester's Landing
before nightfall, but the twilight was fast fading as they came out of
the dense underbrush and cane-brake into the clearing around Lester's
log-cabin.
The spot was dreary and forlorn in the extreme. The river was then
nearly at low water, and its muddy current skirted one side of the
clearing at a distance of about thirty yards from the house. The
wood-yard and landing at the water's level were some ten or fifteen feet
below the rising ground upon which the house stood. The store was a
shanty of rough pine boards with one door and one window, and it stood
at the head of the diagonal path leading from the landing to the high
ground. A short distance back was a rail fence surrounding Lester's
house and cornfield, and back of this clearing, about one hundred yards
from the house, was a dense cane-brake. The corn-stalks had never been
cut, and, as they grew very high and thick within twenty feet of the
house, they offered a good cover to any one approaching or retreating
through them. A rough log barn stood a short distance inside the rail
fence, and, like the house, it was raised several feet above the ground,
on account of the annual overflow of the whole tract. The house was a
rather large building built of logs, the chinks being partly filled with
mud, but it was in a dilapidated condition, the roof being leaky and the
sides partly open, where the mud had fallen out from between the
timbers.
On entering the clearing, William's party rode up to the store and tried
to enter, but, finding the door locked, they approached the house. At
the rail fence, William and Connell dismounted, leaving Gordon and
Bledsoe to hold their horses. Up to this time, they had seen no signs of
life about the place, and they began to think that the birds had flown.
The quiet and the absence of men about the clearing did not prevent
William from exercising his usual caution in approaching the house; but
he did consider it unnecessary to take any stronger force into an
apparently unoccupied log-cabin, where at most he had only vague
suspicions of finding the objects of his search; hence, he left Gordon
and Bledsoe behind. Knowing the general construction of this class of
houses to be the same, he sent Connell to the rear, while he entered the
front door. A wide hall divided the house through the center, and the
occupants of the house were in the room on the right. William's door
leading into the room opened from this hall, while Connell's was a
direct entrance from the back porch, and there were no other doors to
the room.
As the two strangers entered simultaneously, five men, a woman, and a
girl started to their feet and demanded what they wanted. The situation
was evidently one of great danger to the detectives; one glance at the
men, coupled with the fierce tones of their inquiries, showed William
that he had entered a den of snakes without adequate force; but it was
too late to retreat, and he replied that they were strangers who, having
lost their way, desired information.
The scene was a striking one, and it remains as vividly in William's
mind to-day, as if it had occurred but yesterday. In the center of the
room, opposite him, was a broad fireplace, in which the smouldering logs
feebly burned and gave forth the only light in the room. In one corner
stood several shot-guns, and in another, four or five heavy axes.
Grouped about near the fire, in different attitudes of surprise,
defiance, and alarm, were the occupants of the cabin, while to the left,
in the half-open door stood Connell. The flickering flame of the rotten
wood gave a most unsatisfactory light, in which they all seemed nearly
as dark as negroes, so that William asked the woman to light a candle.
She replied that they had none, and at the same moment a young fellow
tried to slip by Connell, but he was promptly stopped. Another large,
powerful man, whose name afterward proved to be Burtine, again demanded,
with several oaths, what their business was.
"I've told you once that I want some information," replied William, "and
now I intend to have you stop here until I can take a look at your
faces."
While William was making them stand up in line against the wall, one of
the largest drew a navy revolver quickly and fired straight at William's
stomach, the ball just cutting the flesh on his left side. At the same
instant, the young fellow previously mentioned, darted out the door,
Connell having sprang to William's side, thinking him seriously wounded.
Connell's approach prevented William from returning the fire of the tall
man, who had jumped for the door also the moment he had fired. William
fired two shots at him through the doorway, and Connell followed him
instantly, on seeing that William was unhurt. Once outside, the tall
fellow sprang behind a large cottonwood tree and fired back at Connell
and William, who were in full view on the porch. The second shot struck
Connell in the pit of the stomach, and he fell backward. At this
moment, the powerful ruffian, Burtine, seized William from behind and
tried to drag him down, at the same time calling for a shot-gun "to
finish the Yankee------------." Turning suddenly upon his assailant,
William raised his revolver, a heavy Tranter, and brought it down twice,
with all his force, upon Burtine's head. The man staggered at the first
blow and fell at the second, so that, by leveling his revolver at the
other two, William was able to cow them into submission. The affray had
passed so quickly that it was wholly over before Gordon and Bledsoe
could reach the house, though they had sprung from their horses on
hearing the first shot.
[Illustration: _The fight at Lester's Landing._--_Page_--]
The two men had escaped by this time into the dense cane-brake back of
the house, and it was necessary to attend to those who had been secured,
and to examine the injuries of Connell and Burtine. The latter's head
was in a pretty bad condition, though no serious results were likely to
follow, while Connell had escaped a mortal wound by the merest hair's
breadth. He was dressed in a heavy suit of Kentucky jeans, with large
iron buttons down the front of the coat. The ball had struck one of
these buttons, and, instead of passing straight through his vitals, it
had glanced around his side, cutting a deep flesh furrow nearly to the
small of his back, where it had gone out. The shock of the blow had
stunned him somewhat, the button having been forced edgewise some
distance into the flesh, but his wound was very trifling, and he was
able to go on with the search with very little inconvenience. Having
captured three out of the five inmates of the cabin, William felt as
though he had done as much as could have been expected of two men under
such circumstances, and he then began a search of the premises to see
whether any evidence of their connection with the robbery could be
found. Absolutely no clue whatever was obtained in the cabin and barn,
nor did the store afford any better results so far as the robbery was
concerned, but on this point William was already satisfied, and he was
anxious to get all information possible about these so-called
storekeepers. In the store, he found bills and invoices showing that the
stock of goods had been purchased in Evansville, but there was no other
writing of any character except some scribbling, apparently done in an
idle moment, upon some fragments of paper in a drawer. On one was
written: "Mrs. Kate Graham, Farmington, Ill."; and on another, amid many
repetitions of the name, "Kate Graham," were the words, "My dear
cousin."
Having found very little of value, the party returned to the three
prisoners and closely examined them. To William's intense chagrin, he
found that these men were, undoubtedly, mere wood-choppers living with
Lester and having no connection with the proprietors of the store.
Although desperate, brutal, and reckless, ready for a fight at all
times, as shown in this affray, they were clearly not the train robbers,
while it was equally evident that the two who had escaped were the
guilty parties.
William learned that the young man who had first slipped out was Barton,
and the man who had done the shooting was Russell. Clark, they said, had
taken the steamer for Cape Girardeau, Missouri, two days before,
accompanied by a married woman, named Slaughter. The description of the
train robbers tallied so well with the appearance of Barton and Russell,
that, taking their actions into consideration, there could no longer be
any doubt of their complicity in the affair, and it was highly provoking
that these two should have escaped. Still, it was an accident which
could hardly have been avoided. The fact that the express company would
not consent to the employment of a larger force of detectives was the
principal cause of this misfortune, for it could have been prevented
easily, had William been accompanied by two more good men of my force.
As it was, two detectives, dropping unexpectedly upon a nest of five
villainous-looking men in the dark, could have hardly hoped to do better
than to secure three of them. It could not have been supposed that they
would know which were the important ones to capture, especially as they
could not distinguish one from another in the uncertain light. Indeed,
as afterward appeared, they were fortunate in having escaped alive, for
the close approach to fatal wounds, which they both received, showed how
deadly had been the intentions of the man Russell, while Burtine had
evidently intended that they should never leave the house alive.
It may be supposed that the shooting on both sides was none of the best,
but it must be remembered that it began without warning, and was over in
two minutes. It cannot be expected that snap-shooting, even at close
quarters, should be very accurate; yet it was afterward learned that
Russell's escape had been about as narrow as William's, two balls having
passed through his clothes and grazed his flesh.