on Saturday, just one week after the robbery had been committed, and he instantly began to gather information from every available source. Except the statements of the negro porter and Thompson, the guard, as condensed in the account heretofore given, little information could be obtained, as so few persons were about the train when it began to move off. While two or three had seen the men who had entered the car, no one had seen who had run the locomotive, and there was, therefore, no certainty as to the number of persons engaged in the job. One passenger had seen two men walking toward the engine in a suspicious manner, and, as his description of these two was entirely different from that given of the men who had entered the car, it was fair to presume that they had been a part of the gang. Still, no one had seen them get on the engine, and it was not certain that they had had anything to do with the affair. At the end of three days, however, William had collected sufficient information to satisfy himself that either four or five men had been at work together; and, by collating the various descriptions he received, he obtained a pretty fair idea of the party.
The first thing which struck him was the similarity of this robbery to the one which had occurred exactly three months before at Moscow, Kentucky. The appearance of the men and their actions had been precisely like those of the Moscow party, and it was evident that they had been emboldened to a second venture by the ease with which they had carried through their former scheme. One thing was imperative: the capture of the whole gang would be necessary to insure the safety of the express company's property in the future. Indeed, it was a mere piece of good fortune that the loss in this instance was not irreparable, for the amount of money carried on the southern-bound train was eighty thousand dollars, and the robbers would have obtained this large amount if the southern-bound train had chanced to arrive first. The robbery was clearly one which no common tramp or sneak-thief would have dared to attempt, and William saw immediately the difficulties of his work. Before proceeding with the incidents of the operation, I must give some idea of the country and the people living there, since no-one would otherwise comprehend one-half of the obstacles and dangers which were involved in a search for the criminals in that vicinity.
The southwestern part of Kentucky and the northwestern part of Tennessee are about as desolate portions of the world as are inhabited by a civilized people. There seems to have been some convulsion of the earth at this point, which is sunk so far below the general level of the whole country as to make it a perpetual swamp. The annual overflow of the Ohio and Mississippi lays the country under water for a distance of many miles, while even in the dryest season, the morasses, sunken lakes, and dense cane-brakes, render it almost impassable, except for people who have been thoroughly acquainted with the locality for years.
The sunken lakes are natural curiosities in themselves, and, although they have attracted considerable attention from scientific men, no satisfactory explanation of their causes and phenomena has been found. The country is full of game and the water is alive with fish, so that the necessities of life are easily obtainable. The cane-brakes are wonderful growths of bamboo cane, and they sometimes cover strips of country as much as seventy miles long. In the spring-time, the water rises to such a height that a skiff can navigate freely above and through the tops of the cane; but in dry weather, the stalks grow so closely together that the brake becomes impenetrable to man or beast, except by winding tortuously around the clumps through the comparatively thin portions of the undergrowth. To search for any one wishing to remain concealed therein is like the proverbial attempt to look for a needle in a hay-stack, since a man can pass within ten yards of another without seeing him or being aware of his presence. The only roads which traverse these places are mere cattle paths, which begin at no place and run nowhere; and, unless a man be thoroughly acquainted with the country, he can never tell where any given path will lead him.
The people around the towns, such as Hickman, Union City, Dyersburg, and Moscow, are a highly respectable and well-educated class; but in the low, swampy country, in the cane brake and along the river, they are not, as a rule, a very agreeable class to live among. Of course, here, as in all other places, there are many intelligent, reliable, honorable men, but the great mass of the cane-brake population are ignorant and brutal. The term which they apply to their stock is also eminently appropriate to designate the people: they are "cane-fed." It is the custom to turn the cattle into the cane to feed when it is young and tender, and, as the amount of nutriment thus obtained is not very large, the "cane-fed" animals bear about the same relation to grain-fed stock that the people in that vicinity bear to the residents of healthy, prosperous, and educated communities. The larger portion of the population may be classed as "poor whites," and they constitute a peculiar variety of the human species. The men are tall, loose-jointed, and dyspeptic; they bear a marked resemblance to the vegetable productions of the vicinity, being rapid of growth, prolific, and generally worthless. Their education consists mainly of woodcraft and rifle-shooting; their proficiency in both of these branches is sometimes astonishing, and it is frequently said of their most expert hunters that they seem to have been born shot-gun or rifle in hand. Accomplishments they have none, except the rare instances where a few tunes upon the banjo have been learned from the negroes. Their tastes are few and simple, – whisky, snuff, hog, and hominy being the necessities and luxuries of life; that is, whisky and snuff are the necessities, all other things being secondary considerations. In their sober moods, they are frank, rough, and courageous; yet, even then, there is little about them to excite other feelings than those of pity and aversion. When full of bad whisky, however, they are apt to become quarrelsome and brutal, so that no man can feel sure of his safety in their company. An affront, real or imaginary, will then be apt to cause bloodshed, even if the insulted party has to bushwhack his enemy from a secure covert on the roadside as he is returning to his home. Every man goes armed, and, though fair fights in broad daylight are rare, cold-blooded murders are not infrequent. The law is seldom invoked to settle private differences, and, in fact, the functions of the legal officials are practically very limited in their influence. If a coroner ever sits upon a corpse, it is understood that he has done his whole duty by recording a verdict that "the deceased came to his death at the hands of some person or persons unknown."
The women, like the men, are tall, thin, and round-shouldered. Up to the age of sixteen they sometimes are quite pretty, though sallow and lifeless always; after that period, they become gaunt, emaciated, and yellow. Whisky hath charms for them, also, but their favorite dissipation is snuff-dipping. They marry very early and bear children nearly every year, so that the size of many of these West Tennessee families is often enormous. The father exercises patriarchal control over his whole household until the daughters are married and the sons old enough and strong enough to defy the parental authority as enforced by a hickory rod. The wife never escapes the application of this potent instrument of marital discipline; and, indeed, should a husband fail to make frequent use of it for the correction of his better half, he would probably soon learn that his dutiful spouse could find a use for it on his own person.
Throughout this whole district, the people suffer from fever and ague for nine months of the year, and dyspepsia seems hereditary. Their physicians, however, usually require no further education than is requisite to attend fractured limbs and gun-shot wounds, the whole school of medicine being limited to three specifics: quinine, calomel, and whisky.
As before stated, it should be understood that the foregoing description applies to the majority of the inhabitants of the low swamp lands only, and not to the residents in and about the towns; even in the cane country itself are to be found occasionally men of education, ability, and good character, and to several of them William was largely indebted for assistance and information.
There was one redeeming feature also to the character of the "cane-fed" population; in the main they were honest, and they would do all in their power to break up a thieving gang, even if they had to hang a few of its members as a warning to the rest. I was thus able to trust them to a certain extent, though the fear which they had of this band of desperadoes rather kept their naturally honest impulses in check for a time.
William was thoroughly acquainted with the character of the people, and he knew what a difficult task had been set before him, especially as he was allowed no other detectives of my force to assist him, the express company being desirous of conducting the operation as economically as possible. Among the large number of men employed directly by the company were two or three good men, but the majority were even worse than useless, and the expense of the affair was finally much greater than