Audio version: Download MP3 or use controls below:
|
“I never opened my head while the robber was shouting for me to open the car and lighting up and the engineer was urging me not to shoot,” Charles explained later, speaking to reporters after the robbery. “I knew it might go hard with me if I revealed my exact position. I stood up in the car with my gun ready for action, waiting for an opening.” The robber stood outside the car, wondering if Charles was silent because he’d been killed by the blast or if he was waiting. He ordered Lucas to light a stick of dynamite and throw it inside. He did. It exploded with terrific force. Still, all was silent except for the robber’s cursing. Another charge was set against the other door, an even bigger one than before. It went off with a roar, knocking engineer Lucas off his feet and stunning him. The robber, apparently panicked at the thought of being stuck here at the scene of the robbery with nobody able to drive the train, shouted curses at him to get back up. After a minute or two, he did. At gunpoint, Lucas threw several more sticks into the unresponsive interior of the car. Two went off; one did not, because Charles, padding across the glass-strewn floor in his stocking feet, reached it and ripped the fuse out before it could go off. One of the blasts was close enough to its mark to knock Charles across the car, his legs bruised and his overalls shredded, but he never let go of the shotgun. Finally, the robber, figuring the clerk had to be dead, ordered Lucas to crawl into the car through the hole in the door. Lucas, shouting ahead that he was coming, started into the car. Charles saw his outline, and knew that the robber would be just behind him and probably would loom above him as he climbed over the threshold. But he wouldn’t be able to see him, because it was dark. So he drew a bead just over Lucas’s head and pulled the trigger. The flash lit up the car, the charge of buckshot plowed through what remained of the door, and the robber — who had been just about to put his head into the spot where the buckshot had flown past — ducked back down again with a string of curses. By now the robber had spent about 40 minutes trying to get into the car, and he appeared to be out of dynamite. Also, it was getting uncomfortably close to the time when the morning freight train would be coming along, with a crew of seven men, all of whom had brought their shotguns with them in hopes of doing some pheasant hunting. “Come out of there,” the robber shouted to Lucas, who was still huddling on the floor of the car. “I guess we’ll quit this car. But (expletive) that (expletive) expressman. I’d wreck this train if I thought I could kill him.” The robber ordered Lucas to uncouple the engine, tender and mail car and steam north to near Goshen, leaving the express car and all the passengers behind. While en route, he continued “pronouncing the bitterest anathemas against the resolute express messenger.” At Goshen, the robber went through the mail bags. “Pretty slim picking,” he remarked. “Probably $300.” He then gobbled up most of the mail clerk’s lunch and ordered Lucas to bring him almost all the way to Eugene. There, half a mile outside the city, he stepped off the train and melted into the trees. “Goodnight,” he called to Lucas. “You’re all right. When they catch me, be easy with me.” But, so far as I’ve been able to learn, they never did. The railroad never said what the express car was carrying that night. But whatever it was, it must have been big, because Charles was given an engraved medal and a $1,000 cash bonus for defending it.
|
On our Sortable Master Directory you can search by keywords, locations, or historical timeframes. Hover your mouse over the headlines to read the first few paragraphs (or a summary of the story) in a pop-up box.
©2008-2015 by Finn J.D. John. Copyright assertion does not apply to assets that are in the public domain or are used by permission.