Holding Up a Train

by O. Henry

　　[Note. The man who told me these things was for several years an outlawin the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he so frankly describes.His description of the _modus_ _operandi_ should prove interesting, hiscounsel of value to the potential passenger in some future "hold-up,"while his estimate of the pleasures of train robbing will hardly induceany one to adopt it as a profession. I give the story in almost exactlyhis own words. O. H.]Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up atrain would be a hard job. Well, it isn't; it's easy. I have contributedsome to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of express companies,and the most trouble I ever had about a hold-up was in being swindled byunscrupulous people while spending the money I got. The danger wasn'tanything to speak of, and we didn't mind the trouble.One man has come pretty near robbing a train by himself; two havesucceeded a few times; three can do it if they are hustlers, but five isabout the right number. The time to do it and the place depend uponseveral things.The first "stick-up" I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way I gotinto it will explain how most train robbers start in the business. Fiveout of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone wrong.The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man and playssome low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name. Wire fences and"nesters" made five of them; a bad heart made the sixth. Jim S-- and Iwere working on the 101 Ranch in Colorado. The nesters had the cowman on the go. They had taken up the land and elected officers who were hard toget along with. Jim and I rode into La Junta one day, going south from around-up. We were having a little fun without malice toward any-body whena farmer administration cut in and tried to harvest us. Jim shot a deputymarshal, and I kind of corroborated his side of the argument. Weskirmished up and down the main street, the boomers having bad luck allthe time. After a while we leaned forward and shoved for the ranch downon the Ceriso. We were riding a couple of horses that couldn't fly, butthey could catch birds.A few days after that, a gang of the La Junta boomers came to the ranchand wanted us to go back with them. Naturally, we declined. We had thehouse on them, and before we were done refusing, that old 'dobe was plumbfull of lead. When dark came we fagged 'em a batch of bullets and shovedout the back door for the rocks. They sure smoked us as we went. We hadto drift, which we did, and rounded up down in Oklahoma.Well, there wasn't anything we could get there, and, being mighty hard up,we decided to transact a little business with the railroads. Jim and Ijoined forces with Tom and Ike Moore -- two brothers who had plenty ofsand they were willing to convert into dust. I can call their names, forboth of them are dead. Tom was shot while robbing a bank in Arkansas; Ikewas killed during the more dangerous pastime of attending a dance in theCreek Nation.We selected a place on the Santa Fe where there was a bridge across a deepcreek surrounded by heavy timber. All passenger trains took water at thetank close to one end of the bridge. It was a quiet place, the nearesthouse being five miles away. The day before it happened, we rested ourhorses and "made medicine" as to how we should get about it. Our planswere not at all elaborate, as none of us had ever engaged in a hold-upbefore.The Santa Fe flyer was due at the tank at 11.15 P. M. At eleven, Tom andI lay down on one side of the track, and Jim and Ike took the other. Asthe train rolled up, the headlight flashing far down the track and thesteam hissing from the engine, I turned weak all over, I would have workeda whole year on the ranch for nothing to have been out of that affairright then. Some of the nerviest men in the business have told me thatthey felt the same way the first time.The engine had hardly stopped when I jumped on the running-board on oneside, while Jim mounted the other. As soon as the engineer and firemansaw our guns they threw up their hands without being told, and begged usnot to shoot, saying they would do anything we wanted them to."Hit the ground," I ordered, and they both jumped off. We drove thembefore us down the side of the train. While this was happening, Tom andIke had been blazing away, one on each side of the train, yelling likeApaches, so as to keep the passengers herded in the cars. Some fellowstuck a little twenty-two calibre out one of the coach windows and firedit straight up in the air. I let drive and smashed the glass just overhis head. That settled everything like resistance from that direction.By this time all my nervousness was gone. I felt a kind of pleasantexcitement as if I were at a dance or a frolic of some sort. The lightswere all out in the coaches, and, as Tom and Ike gradually quit firing andyelling, it got to be almost as still as a graveyard. I remember hearinga little bird chirping in a bush at the side of the track, as if it werecomplaining at being waked up.I made the fireman get a lantern, and then I went to the express car andyelled to the messenger to open up or get perforated. He slid the doorback and stood in it with his hands up. "Jump overboard, son," I said,and he hit the dirt like a lump of lead. There were two safes in the car-- a big one and a little one. By the way, I first located themessenger's arsenal -- a double-barrelled shot-gun with buckshotcartridges and a thirty-eight in a drawer. I drew the cartridges from theshot-gun, pocketed the pistol, and called the messenger inside. I shovedmy gun against his nose and put him to work. He couldn't open the bigsafe, but he did the little one. There was only nine hundred dollars init. That was mighty small winnings for our trouble, so we decided to gothrough the passengers. We took our prisoners to the smoking-car, andfrom there sent the engineer through the train to light up the coaches.Beginning with the first one, we placed a man at each door and ordered thepassengers to stand between the seats with their hands up.If you want to find out what cowards the majority of men are, all you haveto do is rob a passenger train. I don't mean because they don't resist --I'll tell you later on why they can't do that -- but it makes a man feelsorry for them the way they lose their heads. Big, burly drummers andfarmers and ex-soldiers and high-collared dudes and sports that, a fewmoments before, were filling the car with noise and bragging, get soscared that their ears flop.There were very few people in the day coaches at that time of night, so wemade a slim haul until we got to the sleeper. The Pullman conductor metme at one door while Jim was going round to the other one. He verypolitely informed me that I could not go into that car, as it did notbelong to the railroad company, and, besides, the passengers had alreadybeen greatly disturbed by the shouting and firing. Never in all my lifehave I met with a finer instance of official dignity and reliance upon thepower of Mr. Pull-man's great name. I jabbed my six-shooter so hardagainst Mr. Conductor's front that I afterward found one of his vestbuttons so firmly wedged in the end of the barrel that I had to shoot itout. He just shut up like a weak-springed knife and rolled down the carsteps.I opened the door of the sleeper and stepped inside. A big, fat old mancame wabbling up to me, puffing and blowing. He had one coat-sleeve onand was trying to put his vest on over that. I don't know who he thoughtI was."Young man, young man," says he, "you must keep cool and not get excited.Above everything, keep cool.""I can't," says I. "Excitement's just eating me up." And then I let out ayell and turned loose my forty-five through the skylight.That old man tried to dive into one of the lower berths, but a screechcame out of it and a bare foot that took him in the bread-basket andlanded him on the floor. I saw Jim coming in the other door, and Ihollered for everybody to climb out and line up.They commenced to scramble down, and for a while we had a three-ringedcircus. The men looked as frightened and tame as a lot of rabbits in adeep snow. They had on, on an average, about a quarter of a suit ofclothes and one shoe apiece. One chap was sitting on the floor of theaisle, looking as if he were working a hard sum in arithmetic. He wastrying, very solemn, to pull a lady's number two shoe on his number ninefoot.The ladies didn't stop to dress. They were so curious to see a real, livetrain robber, bless 'em, that they just wrapped blankets and sheets aroundthemselves and came out, squeaky and fidgety looking. They always showmore curiosity and sand than the men do.We got them all lined up and pretty quiet, and I went through the bunch.I found very little on them -- I mean in the way of valuables. One man inthe line was a sight. He was one of those big, overgrown, solemn snoozersthat sit on the platform at lectures and look wise. Before crawling outhe had managed to put on his long, frock-tailed coat and his high silkhat. The rest of him was nothing but pajamas and bunions. When I duginto that Prince Albert, I expected to drag out at least a block of goldmine stock or an armful of Government bonds, but all I found was a littleboy's French harp about four inches long. What it was there for, I don'tknow. I felt a little mad because he had fooled me so. I stuck the harpup against his mouth."If you can't pay -- play," I says."I can't play," says he."Then learn right off quick," says I, letting him smell the end of mygun-barrel.He caught hold of the harp, turned red as a beet, and commenced to blow.He blew a dinky little tune I remembered hearing when I was a kid:Prettiest little gal in the country -- oh!Mammy and Daddy told me so.I made him keep on playing it all the time we were in the car. Now andthen he'd get weak and off the key, and I'd turn my gun on him and askwhat was the matter with that little gal, and whether he had any intentionof going back on her, which would make him start up again like sixty. Ithink that old boy standing there in his silk hat and bare feet, playinghis little French harp, was the funniest sight I ever saw. One littlered-headed woman in the line broke out laughing at him. You could haveheard her in the next car.Then Jim held them steady while I searched the berths. I grappled aroundin those beds and filled a pillow-case with the strangest assortment ofstuff you ever saw. Now and then I'd come across a little pop-gun pistol,just about right for plugging teeth with, which I'd throw out the window.When I finished with the collection, I dumped the pillow-case load in themiddle of the aisle. There were a good many watches, bracelets, rings,and pocket-books, with a sprinkling of false teeth, whiskey flasks, face-powder boxes, chocolate caramels, and heads of hair of various coloursand lengths. There were also about a dozen ladies' stockings into whichjewellery, watches, and rolls of bills had been stuffed and then wadded uptight and stuck under the mattresses. I offered to return what I calledthe "scalps," saying that we were not Indians on the war-path, but none ofthe ladies seemed to know to whom the hair belonged.One of the women -- and a good-looker she was -- wrapped in a stripedblanket, saw me pick up one of the stockings that was pretty chunky andheavy about the toe, and she snapped out:"That's mine, sir. You're not in the business of robbing women, are you?"Now, as this was our first hold-up, we hadn't agreed upon any code ofethics, so I hardly knew what to answer. But, anyway, I replied: "Well,not as a specialty. If this contains your personal property you can haveit back.""It just does," she declared eagerly, and reached out her hand for it."You'll excuse my taking a look at the contents," I said, holding thestocking up by the toe. Out dumped a big gent's gold watch, worth twohundred, a gent's leather pocket-book that we afterward found to containsix hundred dollars, a 32-calibre revolver; and the only thing of the lotthat could have been a lady's personal property was a silver braceletworth about fifty cents.I said: "Madame, here's your property," and handed her the bracelet."Now," I went on, "how can you expect us to act square with you when youtry to deceive us in this manner? I'm surprised at such conduct."The young woman flushed up as if she had been caught doing somethingdishonest. Some other woman down the line called out: "The mean thing!" Inever knew whether she meant the other lady or me.When we finished our job we ordered everybody back to bed, told 'em goodnight very politely at the door, and left. We rode forty miles beforedaylight and then divided the stuff. Each one of us got $1,752.85 inmoney. We lumped the jewellery around. Then we scattered, each man forhimself.That was my first train robbery, and it was about as easily done as any ofthe ones that followed. But that was the last and only time I ever wentthrough the passengers. I don't like that part of the business.Afterward I stuck strictly to the express car. During the next eightyears I handled a good deal of money.The best haul I made was just seven years after the first one. We foundout about a train that was going to bring out a lot of money to pay offthe soldiers at a Government post. We stuck that train up in broaddaylight. Five of us lay in the sand hills near a little station. Tensoldiers were guarding the money on the train, but they might just as wellhave been at home on a furlough. We didn't even allow them to stick theirheads out the windows to see the fun. We had no trouble at all in gettingthe money, which was all in gold. Of course, a big howl was raised at thetime about the robbery. It was Government stuff, and the Government gotsarcastic and wanted to know what the convoy of soldiers went along for.The only excuse given was that nobody was expecting an attack among thosebare sand hills in daytime. I don't know what the Government thoughtabout the excuse, but I know that it was a good one. The surprise -- thatis the keynote of the train-robbing business. The papers published all kinds of stories about the loss, finally agreeing that it was between ninethousand and ten thousand dollars. The Government sawed wood. Here arethe correct figures, printed for the first time -- forty-eight thousanddollars. If anybody will take the trouble to look over Uncle Sam'sprivate accounts for that little debit to profit and loss, he will findthat I am right to a cent.By that time we were expert enough to know what to do. We rode due westtwenty miles, making a trail that a Broadway policeman could havefollowed, and then we doubled back, hiding our tracks. On the secondnight after the hold-up, while posses were scouring the country in everydirection, Jim and I were eating supper in the second story of a friend'shouse in the town where the alarm started from. Our friend pointed out tous, in an office across the street, a printing press at work striking offhandbills offering a reward for our capture.I have been asked what we do with the money we get. Well, I never couldaccount for a tenth part of it after it was spent. It goes fast andfreely. An outlaw has to have a good many friends. A highly respectedcitizen may, and often does, get along with very few, but a man on thedodge has got to have "sidekickers." With angry posses and reward-hungryofficers cutting out a hot trail for him, he must have a few placesscattered about the country where he can stop and feed himself and hishorse and get a few hours' sleep without having to keep both eyes open.When he makes a haul he feels like dropping some of the coin with thesefriends, and he does it liberally. Sometimes I have, at the end of ahasty visit at one of these havens of refuge, flung a handful of gold andbills into the laps of the kids playing on the floor, without knowingwhether my contribution was a hundred dollars or a thousand.When old-timers make a big haul they generally go far away to one of thebig cities to spend their money. Green hands, however successful ahold-up they make, nearly always give themselves away by showing too muchmoney near the place where they got it.I was in a job in '94 where we got twenty thousand dollars. We followedour favourite plan for a get-away -- that is, doubled on our trail -- andlaid low for a time near the scene of the train's bad luck. One morning Ipicked up a newspaper and read an article with big headlines stating thatthe marshal, with eight deputies and a posse of thirty armed citizens, hadthe train robbers surrounded in a mesquite thicket on the Cimarron, andthat it was a question of only a few hours when they would be dead men orprisoners. While I was reading that article I was sitting at breakfast inone of the most elegant private residences in Washington City, with aflunky in knee pants standing behind my chair. Jim was sitting across thetable talking to his half-uncle, a retired naval officer, whose name youhave often seen in the accounts of doings in the capital. We had gonethere and bought rattling outfits of good clothes, and were resting fromour labours among the nabobs. We must have been killed in that mesquitethicket, for I can make an affidavit that we didn't surrender.Now I propose to tell why it is easy to hold up a train, and, then, why noone should ever do it.In the first place, the attacking party has all the advantage. That is,of course, supposing that they are old-timers with the necessaryexperience and courage. They have the outside and are protected by thedarkness, while the others are in the light, hemmed into a small space,and exposed, the moment they show a head at a window or door, to the aimof a man who is a dead shot and who won't hesitate to shoot.But, in my opinion, the main condition that makes train robbing easy isthe element of surprise in connection with the imagination of thepassengers. If you have ever seen a horse that has eaten loco weed youwill understand what I mean when I say that the passengers get locoed.That horse gets the awfullest imagination on him in the world. You can'tcoax him to cross a little branch stream two feet wide. It looks as bigto him as the Mississippi River. That's just the way with the passenger.He thinks there are a hundred men yelling and shooting outside, when maybethere are only two or three. And the muzzle of a forty-five looks likethe entrance to a tunnel. The passenger is all right, although he may domean little tricks, like hiding a wad of money in his shoe and forgettingto dig-up until you jostle his ribs some with the end of your six-shooter;but there's no harm in him.As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than if theyhad been so many sheep. I don't mean that they are cowards; I mean thatthey have got sense. They know they're not up against a bluff. It's thesame way with the officers. I've seen secret service men, marshals, andrailroad detectives fork over their change as meek as Moses. I saw one ofthe bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under his seat and dig upalong with the rest while I was taking toll. He wasn't afraid; he simplyknew that we had the drop on the whole outfit. Besides, many of thoseofficers have families and they feel that they oughtn't to take chances;whereas death has no terrors for the man who holds up a train. He expectsto get killed some day, and he generally does. My advice to you, if youshould ever be in a hold-up, is to line up with the cowards and save yourbravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you. Anotherreason why officers are backward about mixing things with a train robberis a financial one. Every time there is a scrimmage and somebody getskilled, the officers lose money. If the train robber gets away they swearout a warrant against John Doe et al. and travel hundreds of miles andsign vouchers for thousands on the trail of the fugitives, and theGovernment foots the bills. So, with them, it is a question of mileagerather than courage.I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is thebest card in playing for a hold-up.Along in '92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officersdown in the Cherokee Nation, Those were their lucky days, and they got soreckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what job theywere going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were going tohold up the M. K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the station of PryorCreek, in Indian Territory.That night the railroad company got fifteen deputy marshals in Muscogeeand put them on the train. Beside them they had fifty armed men hid inthe depot at Pryor Creek.When the Katy Flyer pulled in not a Dalton showed up. The next stationwas Adair, six miles away. When the train reached there, and the deputieswere having a good time explaining what they would have done to the Daltongang if they had turned up, all at once it sounded like an army firingoutside. The conductor and brakeman came running into the car yelling,"Train robbers!"Some of those deputies lit out of the door, hit the ground, and kept onrunning. Some of them hid their Winchesters under the seats. Two of themmade a fight and were both killed.It took the Daltons just ten minutes to capture the train and whip theescort. In twenty minutes more they robbed the express car oftwenty-seven thousand dollars and made a clean get-away.My opinion is that those deputies would have put up a stiff fight at PryorCreek, where they were expecting trouble, but they were taken by surpriseand "locoed" at Adair, just as the Daltons, who knew their business,expected they would.I don't think I ought to close without giving some deductions from myexperience of eight years "on the dodge." It doesn't pay to rob trains.Leaving out the question of right and morals, which I don't think I oughtto tackle, there is very little to envy in the life of an outlaw. After awhile money ceases to have any value in his eyes. He gets to looking uponthe railroads and express companies as his bankers, and his six-shooter asa cheque book good for any amount. He throws away money right and left.Most of the time he is on the jump, riding day and night, and he lives sohard between times that he doesn't enjoy the taste of high life when hegets it. He knows that his time is bound to come to lose his life orliberty, and that the accuracy of his aim, the speed of his horse, and thefidelity of his "sider," are all that postpone the inevitable.It isn't that he loses any sleep over danger from the officers of thelaw. In all my experience I never knew officers to attack a band ofoutlaws unless they outnumbered them at least three to one.But the outlaw carries one thought constantly in his mind -- and that iswhat makes him so sore against life, more than anything else -- he knowswhere the marshals get their recruits of deputies. He knows that themajority of these upholders of the law were once lawbreakers, horsethieves, rustlers, highwaymen, and outlaws like himself, and that theygamed their positions and immunity by turning state's evidence, by turningtraitor and delivering up their comrades to imprisonment and death. Heknows that some day -- unless he is shot first -- his Judas will set towork, the trap will be laid, and he will be the surprised instead of asurpriser at a stick-up.That is why the man who holds up trains picks his company with a thousandtimes the care with which a careful girl chooses a sweetheart. That iswhy he raises himself from his blanket of nights and listens to the treadof every horse's hoofs on the distant road. That is why he broodssuspiciously for days upon a jesting remark or an unusual movement of atried comrade, or the broken mutterings of his closest friend, sleeping byhis side.And it is one of the reasons why the train-robbing profession is not sopleasant a one as either of its collateral branches -- politics orcornering the market.