CHAPTER IV

The Captured Ruffians are desired for Guides, but dare not join in the Search for the Outlaws. – One of the Robbers is Taken, but subsequently Escapes from the Amateur Detectives. – Another Clue suddenly Fails.

Having searched the whole place, and satisfied himself that the men captured had had no connection with the robbery or the robbers, William offered them one hundred dollars to act as guides through the cane-brake to arrest Barton and Russell. They said they could not if they would, since no man could find his way there in broad daylight, much less at night. They further admitted that they dare not attempt it, as Russell would kill them if they learned of their action. It was now pitch dark, and after a vain attempt to beat through the cane in search of the fugitives, William decided to return to Mr. Merrick's until next day.

The next morning at daybreak he started back for Lester's, accompanied by a number of the cane-brake population, all of whom were anxious to secure the one hundred dollars reward. They had long suspected the men at the store of being desperadoes, but they had had a wholesome fear of them on account of their fierce ways and their reckless habit of drawing their revolvers on slight provocation.

On arriving at Lester's, the party found that Lester had returned from Hickman during the night. He was a treacherous-looking scoundrel, and his reputation was bad, although he had never been caught in any crime in that vicinity. His name, John Wesley Lester, showed that he must have once belonged to a pious Methodist family, and, indeed, he claimed to have once been a Methodist preacher himself. He had sunken eyes, milky white, and his hair was lank and long; his complexion was dark, cheeks hollow, chin pointed, and forehead low. His manner was fawning and obsequious to those above him, and he looked and acted like a second "Uriah Heap." He pretended to know nothing of Russell, Clark, and Barton, except that they had come to his place in July, built the store there, and had been around the landing more or less ever since. He said that he knew nothing against them, except that they were gamblers, and that they often went off on gambling excursions, during one of which, according to their own statements, they had killed a man in a quarrel.

William learned from Lester's daughter that Barton had returned during the night to get a shawl, blanket, and two shot-guns. He had told her that Russell was hurt pretty badly, but that they intended to take the first packet down the river. From other parties William learned that the packet Julia had passed down during the night, and had stopped at a point about seven miles below, having been hailed from the bank. He did not place much faith in the theory that the men had taken passage by the Julia, for the reason that Lester's girl was too anxious to tell the story of the route Barton proposed taking. He discovered that Barton had been paying lover-like attentions to the girl, and he believed that Barton had instructed her to say that he intended taking the next packet, in order to give them a false scent. Having set the men of the neighborhood at work searching for Russell and Barton, William returned to Union City.

From Hickman Connell was sent to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to capture Clark, who was said to have gone there three days before.

On the arrival of William in Union City, the superintendent telegraphed to me the result of William's visit to Lester's Landing, and authorized me to send an operative to Farmington, Illinois, to hunt up Mrs. Kate Graham, and learn what she could tell about Russell, Clark, and Barton. A man was sent there the next day, and he had no difficulty in finding Mrs. Graham, who proved to be the wife of a highly respectable business man. She was a member of the church, and was held in high esteem by every one acquainted with her. My agent, therefore, called upon her without any circumlocution or deception, and asked to see her on business. She was confined to her room by illness, but she saw him for a few minutes, and answered his questions so frankly that there was no doubt she was telling the truth. She stated that she was not acquainted with any one living at Lester's Landing; that she did not know, nor ever had known, any persons of the names given (Russell, Clark, and Barton); and that she knew no one who would answer to their descriptions. This clue seemed to come to an end very quickly, yet it afterward proved to be the means by which we captured one of the gang, and it was a striking instance of the necessity for the most careful and minute inquiry upon every point of news obtained, especially upon those received directly from the criminals themselves.

On the 3d of November, Connell went with a constable to the house of Mrs. Gully, the mother of Clark's companion, Mrs. Slaughter, and there he found them both. Clark was surprised by the officers, but he made a bold fight, and was overpowered with difficulty. When finally handcuffed and searched, a navy revolver and fifty dollars in money were taken from him; he was then taken nine miles on horseback to Cape Girardeau, where Connell obtained a light wagon to drive sixteen miles to Allenville, on the railroad leading to Hickman. On this trip Connell made the mistake of trusting to handcuffs alone, instead of securely fastening his prisoner's feet with rope. The idea that one man in handcuffs could escape from two active, unimpeded men did not, however, occur to Connell, and so the constable drove the horse, while Clark and Connell occupied the back seat. In justice to Connell, it should be stated that he had been constantly in the saddle for several days in raw and rainy weather, and had had very little sleep for two nights previous.

About nine o'clock in the evening, when only a mile from Allenville, Clark suddenly made a leap out of the wagon. The horse was jogging along at a good trot, and, though Connell sprang after his prisoner instantly, it was a couple of minutes before the constable could follow. As he ran, Connell fired at the dim figure disappearing in the thick brush; but the next instant he pitched headlong into a deep mud-hole, and, by the time he got out, the cylinder of his revolver was choked with mud, and Clark was far in advance. The chase was kept up as long as the pursuers were able to distinguish the direction of his flight, but, in the darkness of the gloomy woods, it was impossible to follow an athletic fellow like Clark with any hope of success. Connell returned to Union City very much crestfallen, and reported his misfortune. My first feeling, on learning the news, was one of deep regret and anxiety at the loss of one of the leaders of the gang; my second thought was one of profound thankfulness that my men were in no way responsible for it. The situation was an illustration of the disappointments and difficulties which are so often met in a detective's experience; and, though I felt somewhat discouraged, I was more than ever determined that none of these men should eventually escape, even though it should be necessary to follow them for months.

The desire of the express company to employ as few as possible of my operatives embarrassed me exceedingly, for William was obliged to depend upon strangers, and he had little confidence in their ability or discretion. He was now satisfied of the identity of the parties he was in search of, and all that he needed was a small force of experienced and reliable men.

Had I been limited and interfered with in the Maroney case, described in "The Expressman and the Detective," as I was in this, there is no doubt that I might have failed to capture the criminal; but the cordial coöperation and support of the Adams Express Company gave me a fair opportunity to work to good advantage, and victory was the result.

CHAPTER V

A Rich Lead Struck at Last.

William was quite sure, from the reputation and actions of Russell, Clark, and Barton, that they had been the leaders in the robbery, and he believed that Lester could give important information about them; he therefore caused Lester to be brought to Union City, and, on November 5, he succeeded in getting a statement of the doings of these men since Lester had known them. The important points developed were as follows:

They came to Lester's Landing in the middle of July, and built their store. They were rarely there together, as they would go off for two or three weeks at a time, leaving Barton or Clark in charge, and sometimes putting Lester in as storekeeper during the absence of all three. On one occasion, Russell showed him a pocket-book containing nearly one thousand dollars, which he thought he had lost, but which he found under a rail fence where he had hidden it; the other men, also, seemed to have plenty of money. About the middle of October, the three storekeepers went away, and were gone until October 24, three days after the robbery, on which day Lester met Clark and Barton walking toward his house, on the way from Hickman. They seemed quite excited, and said that they had been engaged in a difficulty, but they did not state what it was. They asked him whether he had seen Russell recently, and also whether there was a skiff at his landing; both questions were answered negatively, and they passed on toward the store, while Lester continued his walk to Hickman. On his return at night, he found that Clark and Barton had been across the river all day, scouting the Missouri shore for Russell, and that shortly after their return, Russell had come across the river in a skiff. Russell said that he had been shot, but that he was not much hurt, and he did not seem to act as if he had been hurt at all. Sunday morning, October 29, Clark took passage in a steamer for Cape Girardeau, having Mrs. Slaughter in company, and it was understood that he was going with Mrs. Slaughter to the house of her mother, nine miles from the Cape. Tuesday evening, William and Connell arrived at Lester's, the fight took place, and Barton and Russell escaped. After the detectives had gone back to Campbell's, Barton returned to the house and obtained a shawl, blanket, and two shot-guns; he said that they would never be taken alive, but that Russell had been badly wounded by one of the detectives. William had left two men at the landing the next day to capture the men if they returned, but they were afraid to attempt it, although they had a good opportunity that night. Russell came into the house alone, showing no signs of having been wounded, and said that he and Barton had joined four friends, who were outside waiting for him; that they were all well mounted and armed, and that they intended to kill any one who should betray them or attempt their capture. He added that they intended to make their way on horseback to Alabama, and that they were strong enough to fight their way through, if necessary. Of course, Russell's object was to frighten the detectives and others who were searching for him, as he had no one with him except Barton.

Among other points of value in Lester's statement, was some incidental information relative to the men, which he had learned during the time they boarded with him. He had heard Clark say that his mother lived sixty miles back of Nashville, and Russell had once run a stationary engine in Missouri. Lester was shown the satchel found on the engine after the robbery, and he recognized it as having been left at his house once by a wood-chopper named Bill Taylor, who lived in the cane-brake, some distance below him. He said that the three men each carried a navy revolver and a derringer, while Russell had also a new, large-sized Smith & Wesson revolver.

Meantime, the telegraph had been used constantly to learn something about the three men, Russell, Clark, and Barton, from whatever source information could be obtained. Barton was well known in Nashville, New Madrid, and Union City. He was quite young, but he had been involved in a stabbing affray in Nashville, and was regarded as a desperate character. He had been respectably brought up by Major Landis, General Agent of the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad, and had been given a place in the employ of that road, with good prospects for promotion. Having become dissipated and hardened, he had been discharged from his position, and Major Landis had cast him off; thenceforward, his career had been rapid in the downward direction.

With regard to the other two men, little could be learned, until a rich lead was struck on the seventh of November. The corrected descriptions of the different parties having been sent to all the agents of the express company, Mr. Charles Pink, agent at Cairo, recognized Russell as a man who had sent eight hundred dollars in currency from Cairo to Mrs. M. Farrington, Gillem Station, Tennessee, on the eleventh of September, and who had then started, according to his own statement, for his home in Illinois. Mr. Pink also stated that the chief of police in Cairo claimed to know Russell, and to be able to find him – for a sufficient consideration. Not having any use for the services of this disinterested officer, his offer was politely declined.

The superintendent of the express company was strongly impressed with the belief that Russell and Barton were lurking around Lester's, and so, while William went to Nashville to see what could be learned about Barton and his companions, a number of men were hired to scour the country, hunt through the brake, and guard the Mississippi ferries, while Connell and Crowley, the express messenger, were placed on the Missouri bank, to scout that side of the river. I may say here, en passant, that, with the exception of the two named, these men were a source not only of great unnecessary expense to the company, but of vexation and hindrance to William. In most cases, their scouting consisted in riding the high-roads from one tavern to another, and in order to have something to show for their work, they would bring in every species of wild and foolish rumor that they could discover or invent. As the superintendent frequently desired that these reports should be investigated, much valuable time was thus wasted. These men were not only employed without my advice, but they were retained long after I had urgently requested the discharge of the whole party, and I had great difficulty in obtaining their discharge, even after I was positively sure that the robbers had crossed the Mississippi and escaped into Missouri.

William spent one day in Nashville, and then went to Gillem Station, where he learned that Mrs. Farrington, to whom Russell had sent eight hundred dollars from Cairo, lived on an old, worn-out farm, and passed for a rich widow. She had three sons – Hillary, Levi, and Peter, the latter being quite young. Hillary and Levi Farrington bore a very bad reputation, having been mixed up in all kinds of fights and quarrels for a number of years. They were suspected of horse-stealing and counterfeiting; but most people were afraid of them, and they had never been arrested in that vicinity. William here learned, also, that Barton had been a frequent visitor at the Farringtons', and that he was as bad as the others. While at Gillem Station, William met Pete Farrington, the youngest of the three brothers, and his resemblance to Russell, whose face William had seen by the dim firelight and the flash of his pistol in the cabin at Lester's Landing, caused a sudden possibility to flash across his mind. He reasoned out the connection of the different facts about as follows:

"Russell was, undoubtedly, one of the Moscow and Union City robbers, and he obtained a considerable share of the plunder; two months after the first robbery, I find that he sent eight hundred dollars to Mrs. Farrington; this establishes the connection of those two persons. Barton was one of the actors in both robberies, also, and I find that he was formerly intimate with Mrs. Farrington and her sons; another link. Pete Farrington bears a strong resemblance to Russell, their peculiar Roman noses, with a lump in the middle, being exactly alike, and this creates a strong presumption that they belong to the same family. Now, Russell and Clark were so similar in their general appearance, that many people who have seen them together believe them to have been brothers. Hillary and Levi Farrington, I am told, also closely resemble each other, and they have not been seen about here for some months, they being, according to their mother's account, in Texas. The chain of evidence is very complete; what if Russell and Clark should prove to be the Farrington brothers!"