Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1896 — A REMARKABLE HOLD-UP. [ARTICLE]

A REMARKABLE HOLD-UP.

A Detective Tells a Story of a Hold-Up Not in the Bills. ’This story I see going the rounds of the newspapers about a gang out west scheming to hold up a train with Vanderbilt, Depew and other rich men on it,” remarked a detective to a Washington Star reporter, “reminds me of one similar that occurred in my bailiwick when I was working in California.” “As to how?" queried the reporter. “A chap out there came to me just as the fellow did in the case of this detective and said he was oue of a gang that was going to hold up a train with a lot of 'Frisco millionaires aboard, but that as I had been a friend to him When he needed it. which was true, or he would have then been wearing stripes, he was going to give the snap away. It looked to me be the chance of my life, and I at once began operations to thwart the robbers. I told the chap to go ahead and help the gang get ready for the train, and that when it was held up they would hear something drop, and that he had better keep in a safe place or it might be him along with the others. The train left ’Frisco one night at 9 o'clock, and I was informed that the hold-up was to take place in a lonesome spot about an hour out of 'Frisco. I had a carload of armed men ready, “As we struck the dangerous place I was pretty nervous and so was everybody else, but we meant business and braced up for whatever work we might have. It came at last with a light on the track, where a man stood swinging a lantern, anil the train pulled up. As it stopped there was a volley of a half dozen shots poured into the train from the woods near the track, which my men responded to on the spot, much to my chagrin, for I had wanted the robbers to board us. where we could have them in good shooting position. My men were green, though, or at least most of them were, and they were so rattled by the volley that they forgot what they were doing and banged away. “Nothing was left then but to give chase, which we did for a few hundred yards through the woods, but they got away in the dark, and we found nothing except as we mine back to the train my friend the informer. Him we found lying in the gutter on top of his lantern, scared half to death. We took him in, and as the train pulled out I explained his part In the affair and the millionaires were so pleased with his heroic conduct in saving them that they mode up a pony purse of .$1,500 and presented it to him on the spot and offered him a railroad job where he might have a chance to lend a new life. “He took the money and the job, and she next time I saw him he was in jail at Sacramento with a bullet hole in him. Before he quit living, however, he told me with a laugh that the holdup was a fake from start to finish, and that his wife did the shooting from the woods with a revolver and ran away as fast as she could. They figured that the rich men would make up some sort of a purse, and if they didn’t got more than a hundred dollars it would have repaid them amply for all their expense and trouble. As for the risk, there wasn't any. i was glad nobody heard the scoundrel tell his story, for it made me mighty sore and I never told it till I had been away from California for five years.”