Meantime, a very different scene was enacted within the bank, where the
first trio of robbers were dealing with a trio of bank employes as
resolute as themselves. These were Mr. A. E. Bunker, teller, Mr. J. L.
Heywood, book-keeper and Mr. F. J. Wilcox, assistant book-keeper. The
cashier, Mr. G. M. Phillips, being out of the state, Mr. Heywood was
acting cashier. The bank was at the time occupying temporary quarters, not
arranged with reference to emergencies of this kind. A counter,
constructed somewhat like an ordinary office or store counter, extended
across two sides, between the lobby and the interior of the room. This was
surmounted for nearly its entire length by a high railing containing glass
panels; but in the angle between the two sections of the counter there was
an open space, entirely unprotected, wide enough for a man to pass
through.
When the three robbers entered the bank the employes were busy at their
tasks, and had no suspicion of approaching danger. Mr. Bunker, the teller,
hearing footsteps in the lobby, and supposing that some customer had
entered, turned from his work to wait upon him, coming to the open space
before referred to. There three revolvers were pointing at him, and he was
peremptorily ordered to throw up his hands. His first impression was that
one of his friends were playing a practical joke upon him. Before he had
time to comprehend the situation, the three robbers had climbed over the
counter, and covering him and his associates with their revolvers,
commanded them to hold up their hands.
“We’re going to rob this bank,” said one of the men. “Don’t any of you
holler. We’ve got forty men outside.” Then, with a flourish of his
revolver, he pointed to Heywood and said, “Are you the cashier?”
“No,”, replied Heywood.
The same question was put to Bunker and to Wilcox, each of whom made the
same reply.
“You are the cashier,” said the robber, turning upon Heywood, who was
sitting at the cashier’s desk, and who appeared to be the oldest of the
employes. “Open that safe —— quick, or I’ll blow your head off.”
A second robber—Pitts—then ran to the vault and stepped inside, whereupon
Heywood, who had risen to his feet, followed him and attempted to close
the door. He was instantly dragged back, and the two robbers, thrusting
their revolvers in his face, said, “Open that safe, now, or you haven’t
but a minute to live,” accompanying their threats with oaths.
“There is a time lock on,” Heywood replied, “and it cannot be opened now.”
“That’s a lie!” retorted the robbers, again repeatedly demanding, with
threats and profanity, that the safe be opened, and dragging Heywood
roughly about the room.
Finally, seeming to realize what desperate men he was dealing with,
Heywood shouted, “Murder! Murder!” Whereupon one of the robbers struck
him a terrible blow on the head with a revolver, felling him to the floor.
Pitts then drew a knife from his pocket, and opening it, said, “Let’s cut
his —— throat,” and made a feint of doing so, inflicting a slight wound on
Heywood’s neck as he lay helpless upon the floor. The two men then dragged
him from where he lay, at the rear of his desk, back to the door of the
vault, still demanding that he open the safe. Occasionally also they
turned from him to Bunker and Wilcox, pointing their revolvers at them and
calling on them to “Unlock that safe.” To this demand the young men
answered that they could not unlock the safe. The statement was true,
though in a sense quite different from that in which the robbers
understood it. The reason that they could not unlock it was that it was
unlocked already. The door was closed and the bolts were shot into place,
but the combination dial was not turned. This was one of the humors of the
situation, but one which those in the secret were not in a position to
enjoy. As a last resort for coercing Heywood, who was still lying on the
floor, in but a partially conscious condition, Pitts placed his revolver
close to Heywood’s head and fired. The bullet passed into the vault and
through a tin box containing jewelry and papers left by some customer for
safe keeping. This was the first shot fired in the bank, and its futility
well foretokened the failure of the whole effort.
[A. BUNKER.]
A. BUNKER.
While Bunker and Wilcox received occasional attention from Heywood’s
assailants, their special custodian was Bob Younger. As Bunker had his pen
in his hand when first ordered to hold up his hands, it remained for a
time poised in the air. When he made an effort to lay it down, Younger,
noticing the movement, and thinking it an attempt to reach a weapon,
sprang at Bunker, and thrusting his revolver into his face, said, “Hear,
put up your hands and keep ’em up, or I’ll kill you!” Then, to hold his
prisoners more completely under his control, he compelled them both to get
down on their knees under the counter. All the robbers were very much
excited, and increasingly so as they found themselves baffled and
resisted. Younger would point his pistol first at one of the young men and
then at the other, turning from time to time to search among the papers on
the desk, or to open a drawer in quest of valuables.
While still on his knees, Bunker remembered a revolver kept on a shelf
under the teller’s window, and edged toward the place in hope of reaching
it. Turning his head that way while Younger’s back was toward him, his
movement was instantly detected by Pitts, who leaped before him, and
seizing the pistol, put it in his own pocket, remarking, “You needn’t try
to get hold of that. You couldn’t do any thing with that little derringer,
anyway.” It is no doubt fortunate that Bunker did not succeed in reaching
the weapon, as he would almost certainly have been shot down by the robbers
before he could use it. The pistol was found upon Pitts at the time of his
capture and death.
Bunker now rose to his feet, intending to make some effort to escape or to
give an alarm. As he did so, Younger turned to him and said, “Where’s the
money outside the safe? Where’s the cashier’s till?” Bunker showed him a
partitioned box on the counter, containing some small change and
fractional currency; but did not call his attention to a drawer beneath
the counter, containing $3,000 in bills. Again ordering Bunker to get down
on his knees and keep his hands up, Younger drew from under his coat a
grain-sack, which he began to fill from the box. Presently he turned again
to Bunker, and finding him on his feet, he said, with a wicked look and
with an outburst of horrible profanity, “There’s more money than that out
here. Where’s that cashier’s till? And what in —— are you standing up for?
I told you to keep down.” Seizing Bunker, and forcing him to the floor,
Younger pressed the muzzle of his revolver against Bunker’s temple and
said, “Show me where that money is, you —— —— —— or I’ll kill you!”
Receiving no answer, he left Bunker and renewed his search for the money.
Bunker once more regained his feet, and taking advantage of a moment when
the robber’s face was turned, he dashed past Wilcox, into and through the
directors’ room, to the rear door, then closed with blinds fastened on the
inside. His intention was to enter the rear of Manning’s hardware store,
on the other side of the alley, and give the alarm. He knew nothing yet of
what was going on in the street, and he believed Heywood to be dead from
the effect of the pistol shot apparently aimed at his head.
The first of the robbers to notice the escape was Pitts, whose eyes seemed
to be everywhere at once, and who was then with Heywood in front of the
vault. Before he had time to shoot, however, Bunker was out of his range
around the corner of the vault, and making for the door. With a mad yell
Pitts bounded after the fugitive, and coming in sight of him, fired as he
ran, the ball whizzing past Bunker’s ear and through the blind in front of
him. Bunker threw his weight against the blinds, bursting them open,
plunged down a flight of outside steps, and had nearly reached the rear
entrance of the next building when he was again fired upon by Pitts. This
time the ball hit its mark, passing through the right shoulder, near the
joint, barely missing the sub-clavian artery, and coming out just below
the collar-bone. As he felt the sting and shock of the wound, he stumbled;
but keeping his feet, and not knowing how badly he might be wounded, he
ran on across a vacant lot and around to a surgeon’s office in the next
block. Pitts gave up the chase and returned to his companions in the bank,
but only to hear one of their confederates on the outside shout, “The game
is up! Better get out, boys. They’re killing all our men.” Hearing this,
the three robbers sprang through the teller’s window and rushed into the
street. As the last one climbed over the counter, he turned toward poor
Heywood, who had gotten upon his feet and was staggering toward his desk,
and deliberately shot him through the head. The act was without
provocation or excuse, and was afterwards denounced by others of the gang
as “a fool act,” though others still made an absurd attempt to justify it
on the ground of self-defense. It was a piece of cowardly revenge on the
part of a ruffian who was made desperate by defeat, and who, as was
evident throughout the entire scene in the bank, was badly under the
influence of liquor.
[A. R. MANNING]
A. R. MANNING