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

Express Train No. 2, on the St. Louis, Arkansas and Texas Railway, left Texarkana, Ark., on the evening of December 9, 1887, at 5:50 P. M., fifty minutes late. Nothing unusual occurred until just as the train began to pull out of Genoa, Ark., a small station thirty miles north of Texarkana. Engineer Rue, on looking about, discovered two men standing just behind him, with drawn revolvers, covering himself and fireman.

“What are you doing here?” asked Rue.

The answer was, “Go on! Don’t stop! If you stop I will kill you!” And further: “I want you to stop about one and a half miles from here, at the north end of the second big cut. I don’t want to hurt you or your fireman, but we are going to rob this train or kill every man on it.”

Arriving at the spot designated, the leader abruptly said, “Stop!” The engineer and fireman were then ordered down from the engine, and the leader said, “Boys, how are you all?”

A voice from the brush, where a third man was in waiting, said, “All right, boys!” The latter then walked towards the passenger coaches and with a sixteen-shooting rifle opened fire in the direction of the coaches. The two men in charge of the engineer and fireman were closely masked, and were armed with a brace of forty-five caliber Colt’s pistols, with Winchester rifles strapped across their backs. Messenger Cavin, of the Southern Express Company, put out his lights and, like Br’er Fox, “lay low” for some time. The robbers demanded admittance, showering volleys of oaths and shots in one common fusilade. The heavy Winchesters sped shot after shot through the car, the balls piercing it from side to side, and yet young Cavin held his ground until Rube Burrow ordered the engineer to bring his oil can and saturate the car with the contents. The engineer was ordered to set fire to the car, but before doing so he made an earnest appeal to the messenger, who agreed to surrender, under the condition that he should not be hurt. The robbers were some thirty minutes gaining access to the car. Having done so, they secured about two thousand dollars.

This was the first train robbery in the territory of the Southern Express Company for a period of seventeen years. Not since the robbery of the Southern Express car on the Mobile and Ohio Railway at Union City, Tenn., in October, 1870, by the celebrated Farrington brothers, had highwaymen made a raid on a Southern Express train. The Pinkerton Detective Agency having been given charge of the Union City, Tenn., case, and all the participants in that crime having been punished to the full extent of the law, the management of the Southern Express Company called to their aid at once the Pinkerton force.

Assistant Superintendent McGinn, of the Chicago agency, reached Texarkana in about forty-eight hours after the robbery, and immediately repaired to the scene of the occurrence. Genoa is a small railroad station only a short distance from Red River. The winter rains had filled the bottom lands with water, and the dense and impenetrable growth of matted brush and vines, denuded of their foliage, made the landscape a picture desolate and uninviting. Here in this wild woodland came Superintendent McGinn, on the morning of the third day after the robbery, to take up the tangled skein from which to weave the net for the capture of the train robbers.

On the night of the robbery a report of the occurrence had been telegraphed to the officials of the Express Company at Texarkana, and a posse at once started to the scene of the robbery. A few miles north of Texarkana the posse, being in charge of Sheriff Dixon, of Miller County, came upon three men on the railway track, walking towards Texarkana. This was about three o’clock A. M. The three men were allowed to pass, when the sheriff’s posse, turning about, commanded them to halt. The latter ran, taking refuge in a railway cut some thirty yards distant, and the sheriff’s posse at once opened fire, which was promptly returned, and a score or more of shots were exchanged.

The night being very dark the firing on each side was done at random, and no casualties ensued. After daylight that morning two rubber coats and a slouch hat were found in the vicinity of the fight, and these articles were subsequently identified as having been worn by the men who robbed the train at Genoa. The hat bore the name of a firm in Dublin, Texas, and the coats, which were new, bore the simple cost mark “K. W. P.” Here was an important clew, proving that the robbers had at least purchased the hat at Dublin. Thither the detectives went, with the hat and coats, hoping to have the purchasers identified. Calling upon the Dublin firm, diligent inquiry failed to disclose the purchaser of the hat, the firm having sold hundreds of a similar style during the season.

No trace of the purchasers of the coats could be found at Dublin, but the detectives felt that they were on a hot trail and renewed their exertions. To Corsicana, Waco, Stephensville and other points adjacent they journeyed, exhibiting the coats, with the cabalistic letters, until finally McGinn arrived at Alexander, Texas, as if carried there by that intuition common to shrewd men of his profession, and plied his inquires anew. Falling in with a salesman of the firm of Sherman & Thalwell, to whom the coats were exhibited, the answer of the young salesman, Hearn, was:

“That is the cost mark of Sherman & Thalwell. I put those letters, ‘K. W. P.,’ on myself.” He then seemed lost a moment in thought, and resumed:

“We had a lot of that brand, and I sold a coat like that to one Bill Brock, who lives, when at home, at his father-in-law’s, five miles from Alexander, on the road to Dublin.” He further stated that Brock had been away, he thought, up about Texarkana, and added:

“At the time Brock made the purchase there was a man with him to whom I also sold a similar coat, and who afterwards went to Alabama, and who I think is there now.”

Here was a ray of light upon the dark mystery of December 9th at Genoa. The name, William Brock, had been copied from the hotel register at Texarkana, where it was found under date of December 3d, six days before the robbery, and was in the possession of the detectives who were on the alert for the owner.

A few days prior to this occurrence another detective was shadowing a man in Waco, Texas, who was spending money freely, and who answered the description of one of the train robbers. Following him to Dublin, Texas, the man was ascertained to be Brock, and here the detectives, comparing notes, found themselves in possession of abundant evidence upon which to arrest Brock. Before this was done, however, the important disclosure was made that Brock had two companions, Rube and Jim Burrow, and as these men answered the descriptions of the men who committed the robbery at Genoa the detectives felt quite sure that the names of all three of the robbers were at least known. Further investigation, however, developed the fact that Rube and Jim Burrow had recently gone to Alabama, and the immediate arrest of Brock was determined upon.

At three o’clock on the morning of December 31, 1887, twenty-two days after the robbery, Wm. Brock was arrested at his home near Dublin, Texas. The detectives demanded admittance and Brock surrendered without firing a shot, although he had a forty-five caliber Colt’s revolver and fifty cartridges in a belt under his pillow, and also one of the Winchester rifles used at Genoa. The prisoner was taken to Texarkana and confronted with engineer Rue, who thoroughly identified him. He was also identified by parties who saw him in the immediate vicinity of Genoa. Brock could not stand the pressure brought to bear on him by the wily detectives, and in the course of a few days made a clean breast of his participation in the Genoa, Ark., robbery, confirming the information already in possession of the detectives as to the complicity of Rube and Jim Burrow in the daring adventure.

From Brock it was learned that Rube and Jim Burrow had, about November 15, 1887, gone to Lamar County, Ala. By agreement, Brock had joined the Burrow brothers at Texarkana on December 3d, where all three registered at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Brock in his own name, and Rube and Jim as R. Houston and James Buchanan, respectively, each using his middle name as a surname. They had robbed the train at Genoa on the night of December 9th, and while walking toward Texarkana in the early morning of the 10th had been fired upon by the sheriff’s posse. Taken by surprise, he and Jim Burrow had dropped their coats, while Rube had lost his hat. After going a few miles south of Texarkana they separated, Brock going into Texas and Rube and Jim making their way into Lamar County, Ala.

On the 29th of December Rube wrote the following letter to Brock, which was received by Mrs. Brock, and turned over to the detectives after her husband’s arrest:

The figures 20-29-87 meant that Rube and Jim reached Lamar County on the 20th and the letter was written on the 29th of December. William Brock detailed to the detectives the history of the Bellevue and Gordon robberies, as gathered from Rube, and of the Ben Brook robberies, in which he himself participated. He seemed thoroughly penitent over his crimes, and, after reaching Texarkana, disclosed the fact that he had about four hundred dollars of the proceeds of the Genoa robbery, which he proposed to and did restore.

Brock was a rough, uncouth-looking fellow, about five feet eleven inches high; weighed about 180 pounds, and was a strong-chested, broad-shouldered fellow, whose forbidding features made him a typical train robber. He was about thirty-one years old, and although born in Georgia, his parents moved to Texas when he was quite a child. He was wholly illiterate, not being able to either read or write, and the environments of corrupt companionship tended to fill his untutored mind with evil only. Brock made an important witness in the trials of the participants in the various train robberies in Texas, and was afterwards given a comparatively light sentence as a punishment for his offenses.