Note 35 — XV. FROM BROOKLYN TO CHICAGO.

The colored gentleman who asked me, during the “wild railway journey” of a previous chapter, if I used “sticking plaster,” referred to the exploits of the James boys. Their murderous adventures, I find, cover a period of over twenty years, beginning, some people allege, with a sort of guerilla warfare during the war. A reward was offered a few years ago for the capture of the leader, Jesse James, dead or alive, and he was treacherously murdered by one of his confederates, who, being tried and sentenced to death, was reprieved and rewarded in accordance with the State proclamation. He and several other members of the gang are still occasionally before the courts, I believe, on various charges; some appealing to the superior power of the law, others working out their various sentences, and some of them free. One of their most daring adventures is a tragedy that is not likely to be forgotten in the criminal history of America. The story is to railway travel, so far as the mere robbery itself is concerned, what the robbery of “The Lyons Mail” is to the history of posting in France and England a century ago. It is a truly dramatic story, in two acts. The first scene discovers the postmaster and two or three friends of the village of Glendale, at a flag station on the Kansas City branch of the Chicago & Alton Railway. It is a pleasant October evening. Suddenly they are made prisoners by a band of twelve masked and heavily-armed men. They are marched to the little railway station, where the telegraph-operator, an old woman, and the railway auditor, are added to the number. They comprise the entire population of the very picturesque and romantic station. The telegraphic instrument is destroyed, and the station-master compelled to lower his signal lights and stop the mail then due. This ends the first act. The second is the arrival of the train, the sudden and expert seizure of engine-driver and guard (the latter battered almost to death with the but-end of a pistol), the overawing of the passengers with revolvers, and the plunder of the mails. Horses are then brought up to the track, the men mount with their booty, and order the train to proceed. As the cars move away, the robbers write a despatch that the telegraph-operator is directed to send off as soon as his instrument is in order:—“We are the boys who are hard to handle, and we will make it hot for the boys who try to take us. Signed, Jesse and Frank James, Jack Bishop, Irwin Cohens, Cool Carter,” etc. The plunder was thirty thousand dollars in gold.