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

On the twenty-second day of January succeeding their escape from Lamar, Rube and Jim boarded a Louisville and Nashville passenger train, south bound, at Brock’s Gap, a few miles south of Birmingham. Meantime an accurate description of the brothers had been obtained, and descriptive circulars had been scattered broadcast by the officials of the Southern Express Company, one of which was in possession of Conductor Callahan, on whose train the robbers had taken passage. He was not certain of their identity, and simply sent a telegram to Chief Gerald, of the police force of Montgomery, to which point they had paid fare, which read as follows: “Have special officer meet number five.”

Captain John W. Martin, one of the most efficient officers of the force, met the train. The night was rainy, and Captain Martin wore a rubber coat and slouch hat, which completely concealed his identity. The train pulled into the depot just as Captain Martin arrived, and he inquired of the conductor what was wanted. The conductor replied, “I think those two fellows walking down the track there, and who boarded my train at Brock’s Gap, are the Burrow brothers.”

Captain Martin at once called to Officer McGee, who was on duty at the depot, and, like himself, attired in rain coat and slouch hat, and imparted to him the information received. The officers then walked toward the men, who were some distance away, and hailed them, saying: “You can not go through that railroad cut at night.”

Rube replied: “We are going to the country to get timber, but would like to get a boarding-house for the night.”

Captain Martin said, “We are going up town and will show you one.”

Rube, thinking the officers were railroad men, replied, “All right,” and, joining them, the four men walked a distance of about a half a mile, when, on reaching the police station, Captain Martin inserted the key in the door, and while in the act of unlocking it Rube asked, “What place is this?”

Captain Martin, shoving the door, which was adjusted with a heavy spring, half open, with one hand, laid the other on Rube’s shoulder and said: “This is the office of the Chief of Police, and you boys may consider yourselves under arrest.”

“I reckon not,” replied Rube, and straightway made a break for liberty.

Captain Martin grappled with him, and the heavy door of the station-house closing, caught his rubber coat in a vise-like grip, and held him fast. Soon freeing himself, however, by pulling out of his coat, he dashed after Rube, who had broken away, and after running some thirty paces, turned and saw his brother Jim down, with a police officer on top of him. Jim, in attempting to break away, had fallen, in the scuffle with Officer McGee, over a street hydrant.

At this moment Rube, seeing the officer had started in pursuit, turned and fled like a deer up the street. Neil Bray, a printer, being on the opposite side of the street, joined the officer in the pursuit and was shot by Rube, who twice fired upon him, one of the shots taking effect in the left lung and nearly causing his death.

Out into the darkness Rube fled, leaving Jim in the hands of the officers, and scaling a fence some hundred yards ahead he was soon lost to his pursuers.

Jim was taken to police headquarters and gave his name as Jim Hankins, and said the other man’s name was Williams, and he had only known him three weeks. However, while en route to Texarkana, he confessed his identity, and said to Capt. Martin:

“I am Jim Burrow, and the other man is my brother Rube, and if you give us two pistols apiece we are not afraid of any two men living.”

He further stated that while walking up the street from the depot he became satisfied they were in the hands of the police, but as Rube had the only pistol, he having failed to secure his in his sudden flight from his home in Lamar County, he was looking for Rube to make the first break. Rube, however, suspected nothing until he reached the police station. When afterwards chided by friends for his failure to assist Jim, in view of the fact that the latter was unarmed, Rube replied that he thought the whole of Montgomery was after him.

The next day, realizing the faux pas of the previous night, and the notorious character of the fugitive, the entire police force of Montgomery joined in the chase. The city, its suburban districts and the adjacent country all swarmed with anxious pursuers.

No trace of Rube, however, was found until just before dark, when Officers Young and Hill, having searched a negro cabin about five miles south of Montgomery, without result, rode off in the direction of the city. After leaving the house a negro boy came running after them and informed the officers that the man for whom they were searching had just gone into the cabin they had left. Rube, hungry and exhausted, had seen his pursuers leave the cabin, and immediately thereafter went in and asked for something to eat.

Young and Hill rode back at once in company with the boy, and instructed him to go in and tell the man to come out. They were about thirty paces in front of the cabin, when Rube came to the door, and, looking out, saw a solitary horseman in front of the cabin. He deliberately sat down in a chair in the doorway and pulled off his boots, while Officer Young dismounted. Hill had covered the rear of the cabin.

Taking his boots in his left hand, Rube held his trusty revolver in his right. His chief forte was a running fight. With the agility of an Indian he sprang from the cabin and bounded away to the swamps, which were distant only about one hundred yards, and as he passed in front of Officer Young the latter rested his breech-loading shot gun on his saddle and fired the contents of both barrels in quick succession at the fleeing desperado, when only about thirty yards distant.

Rube dropped his boots and hat, and to the chagrin of the officer, when he picked them up, he found them filled with number eight birdshot. He had substituted these for his loads of buckshot early in the day to shoot a bird, and had forgotten the fact. Rube carried to the day of his death the marks of the birdshot, which filled his neck and face, but were powerless to stop his flight.

Fifty yards further on a countryman, who had joined the pursuing party, sprang up from behind an embankment, and was in the act of taking aim at twenty paces distant, his gun being charged with buckshot, when Rube wheeled and covered him with his revolver. His pursuer dropped flat to the earth and Rube escaped. He was wont to revert to this incident frequently, afterward and laughingly state what was the truth, that he had fired his last cartridge, and the intrepid courage with which he turned and covered his pursuer with an empty revolver saved his life.

Hatless and bare-footed, the friendless felon now found himself, at dark of night, in a wilderness of swamp, whose treacherous waters were covered with a tangled growth of brush and vines, and chilled with the winter’s cold. Exhausted with the toils of the day’s flight, his face and neck smarting with the keen pain of the wounds he had just received, hungry and foot-sore, his body quivering with the biting cold—could human flesh and blood be subjected to the frenzy of sharper distress than that which faced Rube as he blindly picked his footing through this terra incognita? Plodding through bog and fen, full knee-deep with water, his progress was beset by indescribable perplexities, and so it was nearly midnight when he emerged from the marsh into a field, distant only about three miles from the point at which he had entered it.

A flickering light in a negro cabin a few hundred yards away, on the slope of a hill, gave friendly token of comfort within, but Rube, fearing that some one of his pursuers might be sheltered there, approached it with cautious step. All was still within, save the snoring of the sleeping inmates, and in his dire extremity the outlaw slowly pulled the latch-string which hung without and entered. With bated breath he looked about him. The cheerful log fire alone beamed for him a silent welcome. Noiselessly taking a chair he sat himself before the coveted warmth of the lowly hearthstone, while the old colored man and his family slept on, in blissful ignorance of the presence of their midnight visitor.

The robber tarried only long enough to warm his chilled frame into energy for the task of further flight, and after about one hour’s stay he quietly donned the shoes of the black pater familias, and, stealthily drawing an old quilt from a couch in which a brood of pickaninnies slept, all unconscious of their loss, he wrapped it about him, and, stepping silently out into the darkness, resumed his journey.

A few miles further on he stole a horse from the stable of a farmer, and, mounting its bare back, rode hard and fast till daylight, when he turned the animal loose in the road, and betaking himself to the protection of the forests that covered the bottom lands of the Alabama River, left no further trace of his course. Here his trail was lost to the detectives, who, after an arduous and vain pursuit of several days, abandoned all further effort in that vicinity.