Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train robbers : $b An accurate and faithful history of their exploits and adventuresAgee, George W. (George Washington)
History
Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train robbers : $b An accurate and faithful history of their exploits and adventures
Agee, George W. (George Washington)
Burrow, Rube, 1854-1890
A crowning sensation in American journalism was reached when the
_Age-Herald_, of Birmingham, chartered a special train to enable it
to place upon the breakfast tables of Atlanta the daring exploits of
Rube in Blount County, and the Atlanta _Constitution_ responded by
chartering a like train to distribute at Birmingham an interview with
the famous bandit while he was supposed to sit under the very vine and
fig tree of the _Age-Herald_, but, as a matter of fact, was engaged
in combing the hayseed out of his hair after a night’s lodging in his
father’s barn.
As soon as the Blount County sensation had exploded, the detectives of
the Southern Express Company returned to Lamar County, and an incessant
watch was kept upon the houses of Allen Burrow, Jim Cash, and others.
Detectives disguised as peddlers of books, lightning rods, and nursery
stock, and others assuming the simple guise of tramps, sold their wares
in the one case, and begged bread in the other, from house to house,
all over Lamar County, and until Allen Burrow said one day to Rube:
“I believe there is a detective under every bush in the county; you had
better leave.”
Rube concluded his father was right, and on the twentieth day of
November, just about a month after their arrival, Rube and Joe left
Lamar County again. The two men went afoot to within a few miles of
Columbus, Miss., having resolved to walk into Florida and avoid the
necessity of hiding out in the brush all winter in Lamar County.
Joe Jackson was not as robust as Rube, and was not physically equal to
the task of walking several hundred miles. He proposed, after trudging
about eighteen miles, to return to Lamar County, purchase horses, and
make the trip on horseback. Rube dissented, fearing their trail would
be discovered and that pursuit would ensue, but suggested that they
return to the home of Jim Cash and purchase a yoke of oxen and a wagon
owned by him and make the trip in that way. Joe Jackson was averse
to this proposition at first, but Rube argued that as drivers of an
ox-cart they could assume the role of laborers and thus fully disguise
themselves. Returning, therefore, to Cash’s house, the oxen and cart
were purchased.
It was the custom of Allen Burrow and Cash to make frequent trips by
wagon across the country to Columbus, Miss., and so it was arranged
for Allen Burrow to take the two men, in a covered wagon drawn by
two horses, to within one mile of Columbus. Jim Cash, according to
arrangement, followed with the ox team, and in the outskirts of the
town, after dark, on the night of November 28th, the four men met.
Through the intervention of Cash an ample supply of provisions,
purchased from a store in Columbus, was stored away in the wagon,
and at ten o’clock at night the outlaws, in the garb of plodding
ox-drivers, resumed their journey southward. Cash and Burrow returned
home the next day, the former announcing that he had sold his ox team
in Columbus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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