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
I THE PARTY ON SPECIAL NO. 218
II THE HOLDING-UP OF OVERLAND NO. 3
III A NIGHT'S WORK ON THE ALKALI PLAINS
IV SOME RATHER QUEER ROAD AGENTS
V A TRIP TO THE GRAND CAÑON
VI THE HAPPENINGS DOWN HANCE'S TRAIL
VII A CHANGE OF BASE
VIII HOW DID THE SECRET LEAK OUT?
IX A TALK BEFORE BREAKFAST
X WAITING FOR HELP
XI THE LETTERS CHANGE HANDS AGAIN
XII AN EVENING IN JAIL
XIII A LESSON IN POLITENESS
XIV "LISTENERS NEVER HEAR ANYTHING GOOD"
XV THE SURRENDER OF THE LETTERS
XVI A GLOOMY GOOD-BY
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 Cañon 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 Cañon 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 Fé, 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 Fé 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 Fé 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.