Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train robbers

The murder of the postmaster at Jewell, Ala., was done by Rube Burrow in a spirit of bravado, and, doubtless, with the design of terrorizing the law-abiding people of that section into such a state of timidity as would give additional safety to his chosen place of refuge, and at the same time knit him all the more closely to the lawless band of his followers, who not only connived at his crimes but profited from the spoils of his misdeeds.

Despite the vigilant and unremitting search of the detectives the presence of the bandit in Lamar County had not been definitely known until the murder of Graves occurred. The officials of the Southern Express Company determined, therefore, to either capture Rube or drive him from Lamar County. The task was a difficult one, in view of the fact that Rube never slept under a roof nor broke bread at any man’s table in Lamar County after the murder at Jewell. Soon thereafter, when invited by his father to come into his house, on one occasion, he refused, saying, “I might as well give myself up.”

Detectives Jackson and Burns, of the Southern Express Company, about this time went into Lamar County and literally camped there. They endeavored by every possible means to discover the whereabouts of the outlaws by shadowing the persons who communicated with them from time to time, but the army of scouts in the secret service of the cunning desperado was so well trained, the field in which they operated so extensive, that the only result obtained was to force them to leave.

About September 1st Rube and Joe concluded to depart. A few days before their departure, however, Mrs. Allen Burrow brought Rube a message from Rube Smith, to the effect that the latter wanted to see him.

Rube Smith is a son of James Smith, who lives in Lamar County, near Crews Station, and about eight miles from the home of Allen Burrow. He is a first cousin of the Burrow brothers. Smith was about twenty-eight years old, five feet eight inches high, weighed one hundred and sixty pounds, and bore a very bad reputation in all that section. He had never followed any legitimate occupation, except that, for a short period in 1883, he had been an itinerant photographer, moving about from place to place, and making cheap photographs in country towns of northern Alabama. In the fall of 1888, however, he was indicted, with James McClung and James Barker, an uncle, for robbery from the person of a Mr. Johnson, a respectable old farmer of Lamar County. Smith and party went to farmer Johnson’s home about nightfall, with their faces masked, and at the point of their revolvers demanded his money. The old man hesitating, was cruelly beaten, and at last divulged the hiding-place of his money, some three hundred dollars, which the robbers secured. They left their victim bleeding and maimed, lying upon the floor, where he remained until the next morning, when kindly neighbors came to his assistance. Rube Smith then became a fugitive from justice.

Burrow, knowing of the presence of the detectives in the vicinity, suspected that Smith was being used by the officers to entrap him. After considering the matter several days he sent, through his sister, a message to Rube Smith that he would meet him at the hour of midnight, September 4th, in Fellowship church-yard, a point about four miles from Vernon. Thither Burrow and Joe Jackson repaired early after dark, on that night, for the purpose of forestalling any plan which the detectives might have to capture them through Smith. The watch was set, and each, by turn, stood sentinel in this quiet and lonely spot, awaiting the appointed hour. Smith, in due course, appeared as agreed. He was alone, and Burrow was soon assured that his proposal to join him was genuine.

There, in the graveyard of Fellowship church, where the body of the famous outlaw now lies buried, at the solemn hour of midnight, the compact which linked Rube Smith’s fortunes with his own was made. There was no subscribing to the black oath, no signing in letters of blood, but with the skillfulness of a master Rube Burrow inducted his young kinsman into the office of train robbing to which he had elected him. He described the preliminary step of boarding the engine and getting the “drop;” the method of “holding up,” and all the subtle artifices of the craft, in such a masterly style that the new recruit smacked his lips in anticipation of the rich dish spread before his mental vision, and, after the manner of little Jack Horner, he mentally “put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, and said, what a good boy am I.”

Setting out, therefore, with the two-fold object of avoiding the detectives in Lamar County, and of robbing a train, the three men journeyed southward, but without any particular destination in view. Going down the west bank of the Tombigbee River, they traveled a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, to Buckatunna, Miss., on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, seventy-three miles north of Mobile.

After a careful deliberation of the matter, Rube Burrow selected Ellisville, Miss., a point on the Queen and Crescent Railway, sixty-five miles south of Meridian, and distant fifty-five miles east across the country, as the point for making his seventh train robbery.

Leaving the Mobile and Ohio Railway at Buckatunna on the fourteenth day of September, the men walked towards Ellisville, arriving there on the night of the 17th of September. Here Rube Burrow concluded, after finding there were three trains daily each way on that road, that there was no money in robbing a train on the Queen and Crescent Railway. He argued that the shipments would be divided up between the several trains, and no one train would carry much money. He had been so often disappointed in the amounts obtained that he was now planning, with great care, to make a big haul. He concluded, therefore, to reverse his course, return to Buckatunna, and rob the Mobile and Ohio, as the schedule on that line indicated only a single daily express train each way. Accordingly the robbers resumed their journey towards Buckatunna, through the “Free State of Jones.”

The county of Jones, Miss., bears to this day the appellation of the “Free State of Jones.” During the late civil war the county seceded from the Confederacy and set up an independent government of its own. Here, in the famous Bogue Homer swamp, which covers one-third of the area of the county, hundreds of Mississippians, and Alabamians from across the border, declared themselves non-combatants, and gathering their families about them, set up a military government of their own. Fortified within this inaccessible wild land, by the aid of their flint locks, they defied Confederate and Federal alike, and in the solitude of a peacefulness disturbed only by an occasional unsuccessful raid upon them, lived on, unmindful of the fate of the Republic. One may ride, at this day, over the public road, so-called, from Ellisville to Buckatunna, sixty miles, and in all that distance he will find no sign of human habitation save at intervals of ten miles or so a rude log hut, and here and there a rosin orchard.

Through this lonely woodland, to the music of the soughing pines, Rube Burrow, Joe Jackson and Rube Smith wended their way from Ellisville to Buckatunna. On Sunday night about dark they reached an abandoned log cabin on the farm of one Neil McAllister, a very intelligent colored man, who lives three miles from Buckatunna station. Neil found the men snugly quartered in this out-house early Monday morning, and had frequent interviews with them during their stay of forty-eight hours on his premises.

The robbers visited a trestle at Buckatunna Creek, two miles south of the station of that name, during Monday, and, after carefully maturing their plans, agreed to rob the south-bound express train, due on Wednesday, September 25th, about 2:30 A. M., at the trestle, one and a half miles south of the station.

Leaving Neil McAllister’s cabin soon after dark the trio passed through Buckatunna and went to the trestle, where they remained until the north-bound train passed at midnight. Rube Burrow and Rube Smith then walked to the station, where, on the arrival of the south-bound train, in charge of Conductor Scholes and Engineer Therrill, the two men quietly boarded the engine as it pulled out from the station.

The cool and determined manner in which the work was done is well described by Zack Therrill, the engineer, in his statement taken by the express officials next day.

STATEMENT OF ENGINEER THERRILL.

Just as I was pulling out of Buckatunna I heard a voice on my engine, and I thought the fireman was speaking to me. I turned to find the fireman and myself covered with pistols by two men. The larger of the two men, who had his pistol presented at me, said, “Pull on out!” After I had run several hundred yards he said, “Don’t be uneasy.” I told him I was not uneasy. He said: “I am going to rob this train or kill every man on it. Stop the train on the trestle beyond the bridge, so the passengers can’t get off. I will kill every one that hits the ground.” I stopped as directed, and was ordered to get down from the engine. When I got down, there was a man standing opposite the gangway on the ground, whom I will designate as number three. He backed towards the express car door. The man number one, who had been on the engine, said, “Call the express messenger.” Just then robber number three, who was in front, covered the messenger, who was sitting on the opposite side of the car, with his back toward us.

The conductor came out at this moment and asked what was the matter. The big man, number one, then fired a shot over my head towards the conductor and said, “Get back or I will kill you!” The messenger had not yet opened the door, but was covered by the pistol of number three. The big man, number one, then covered the messenger as soon as he had shot. The fireman was standing behind me, with a coal pick, covered by number two, who had been on the engine. The messenger shoved the grated door back, the wooden or outside door being already open. The messenger could not have stepped aside, as he was covered by two pistols. Number one then said, “Give me your hand and pull me in the car. Handle my hand carefully, as there are corns on it.” He was in the car five or six minutes. Just after he got in the car the conductor again called to know what was the matter. Number three said, in a low tone of voice, “Look out, I will settle him.” He went forward a few paces, called out “Come and see,” squatted and fired one shot. He then got up, ran forward about ten feet, and laid down flat on his stomach. He laid there until number one, in the car, told the messenger to get out of the car, which he did, in front of the robber, who gave him the bag with its contents to hold, while he himself got out.

Number one then said to me, “Go to the engine with me and pull the mail car off the trestle.” I told him it was off, and told him if it was not off I did not have steam enough to move the train. He then said to number two, “Take the fireman to the engine,” and added, “Wait, I will go with you.” He told the fireman to get on the engine, and told me to stay on the ground. He told the fireman to get his fire started, ordered number two to stay with the fireman, and instructed me to go with him to the mail car. He told the fireman, before he started off, not to move the engine until he came back, and said he would kill me if it started. I went back to the mail car as instructed, and when we got to the express car he instructed number three to bring the messenger up to the mail car. Number three took the bag from the messenger as soon as he struck the ground. I called the mail agent, as instructed, who was inside of the car. As soon as he appeared he was covered by number one, who ordered me to go into the mail car ahead of him, which I did. He ordered the mail agent to get up his registered letters, and said to him, “You have been hiding them.”

The mail agent replied, “No, I have only turned the light down.” The mail agent showed him the registered mail, saying, “There it is,” and added, “You are doing the worst thing you ever did in your life. You will get the U. S. Government after you, and there are not $20,000 in the pile.” “That don’t make any difference,” said the robber; “I will take them anyhow.” He left the car and said to the mail agent, “If you don’t want to get hurt, shut the door and keep it shut until the train leaves here.” He gave the packages he got out of the mail car to number two, who was guarding the fireman, and told me to get up on my engine and pull out. I had started up on the engine when he told me to sit in the gangway between the tender and engine. Number one then said: “Do anything you want to get steam up.”

We were there ten minutes getting up steam. During that time he said he worked on a section once—though not on this road—and was discharged and a negro put in his place. He then decided not to work any more for a living. He said he had been around towns and had heard people say what they would do if they were “held up.” “What can a man do,” I asked, “in the fix you have me in?” “Do as I tell you.” he replied.

When I got steam up he said, “Hurry up to State Line, and send a message up and down the road, so they can get after us. Tell the operator I say to hurry up about it. Tell the boss of those cars (meaning the express cars) to put steps on them, or I will stop robbing them. Don’t ring the bell or blow the whistle,” he concluded, “or I will shoot into the engine.”

He told me, going down to the bridge, that he came here to rob this train because there was a boast in the papers last spring that he could not rob it, and he just wanted to show them what he could do.

The other two men, while we were talking at the engine, had gone out in the bushes. While going to the engine with me he told number three to put the messenger back in his car. When I got on the engine to start he said, “Holler to those boys on the other side, and tell them to get back from the train.” I thought he referred to his men, but saw none. In coming down from the station he said he had men and tools to do the job with.

The man described by Engineer Therrill as number one is easily recognized as Rube Burrow, number two as Joe Jackson, and number three as Rube Smith. The trestle at which the robbery was committed was undergoing repair by a force of bridge men, and the train was in the habit of stopping and then proceeding slowly across it. When the train stopped, therefore, Messenger Dunning supposed it was on account of the bad condition of the trestle, and gave little thought to the matter. When hailed by the engineer, who had been instructed by the robbers to call him to the door, the messenger found himself, on facing about, covered by revolvers through the grated or iron barred door of the car, the outer wooden door being open.

“Hold your hands down, and come to the door, or I will kill you,” said Burrow.

A shot from the pistol of one of the robbers on the outside of the car gave emphasis to the highwayman’s request, and when the grated door was pushed back, as ordered by Rube Burrow, he got in the car and, handing a sack to the messenger, said: “Put your money in there. Hurry up! I have no time to lose.”

Securing $2,685 from the express car, Burrow then went to the mail car and called for the registered mail. Mail Agent Bell had been collecting the registered matter, preparatory to leaving the car with it, when Rube entered and demanded it.

The registered mail, which contained $795, was taken, making the total amount secured $3,480, or $1,160 each.

In stopping the train the passenger coaches had been left on the trestle so as to prevent any one reaching the ground, twenty feet below, and making an attack from that quarter. The shots fired soon after the train was halted, two of which took effect in the steps of the coach on which Conductor Scholes stood, silenced further inquiry, and the work was completed without molestation.

When Burrow joined his comrades, after leaving the mail car, he seemed anxious to have the train start. During the run from the station down to the trestle he had forbidden the fireman to put any coal in the fire-box, and, hence while the train was being robbed so much steam was lost that it was ten minutes after the robbery was over before sufficient steam was obtained to get under headway. Finally the train resumed its onward course, and Burrow, sending a few parting shots of humor after Engineer Therrill, joined his comrades who were anxiously awaiting his coming in the brush a few yards distant.

The train dispatcher’s record of that day bore the simple explanation: “Number five delayed thirty minutes at Buckatunna trestle, getting robbed.”

The news of the robbery brought the officials of the Express and Railroad Companies by special train to the scene. Possees were at once organized and sent in pursuit. It was evident that the work was that of Rube Burrow. “I will rob this train or kill every man on it” was the identical expression used at Genoa and at Duck Hill. His disposition to be humorous—in fact, every detail of the robbery gave evidence of his identity as the leader.

The robbers were traced from the scene of their crime in an easterly course. Blood-hounds were used in the pursuit, but the trail being cold they were abandoned. The detectives, however, quietly took up the trail and followed it towards Demopolis, Ala. At this point it was found that Rube Smith separated from the other men about October 5th, and went by rail into Lamar County. Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson continued their journey afoot, and traveling by easy stages reached Lamar County on the night of October 23d, impelled by some strange fancy to return to the spot from which they had been so recently routed, and from which they were soon to depart again.