CHAPTER 3
Shades of Jesse James!
IT WAS 20 February 1892. The American Express Special was once again making its run with the extra-valuable Saturday load. In the money car, messenger Daniel Mclnerney settled down to his paperwork. In the early hours of the morning, as the train pulled out of Syracuse, where it had stopped to take on freight, a smartly dressed, bearded man leapt unseen on to the forward platform of the car in front of Mclnerney's. Once aboard, he removed his gold-framed spectacles and placed them in the inside pocket of his overcoat. Then he climbed on to the platform railing, grasped the edges of the two cars and hauled himself up on to the roof.
Crouching low and keeping to the middle, he ran along the roof to the other end and dropped down on to the rear platform. From there it was just a step to the front platform of the car he was interested in, the money car. The speed of the train, as it left the depot, had forced him to jump aboard the wrong car. The run along the roof had not been part of his plan but he had managed it without even taking off his hat.
Once safely on the platform, he removed the derby and, threading a cord through the sweatband, strapped it to the railing, with his valise. The man who had got away with a fortune from American Express was robbing the same train again just five months later.
From his satchel Perry took a red hood with eye and mouth holes, which he tied tightly around his neck. It was the same mask he had used last time. Why change a winning formula? He strapped his Colt. 44 and cartridge belt across his overcoat. The revolver was cumbersome, with a seven-inch barrel and a bore you could put your finger in but it had an impact as big as its pull. He placed two smaller revolvers, Derringers, in his coat pockets, within easy reach in case he dropped the larger gun. Given what he was about to do, that was a distinct possibility.
He levered himself up once again, this time on to the roof of the money car. From his satchel he took a rope with a hook at one end and knots at intervals along its length. He attached the hook to the overhanging eave on one side of the car. Then, keeping the rope taut, he stretched it across the roof and dropped it over the other side. It slipped down beside the door. Unlike the solid end door, this had a glass window. Perry leaned down, listening for any sign that he had disturbed the messenger inside, then inched down the rope.
The train was now travelling at nearly fifty miles an hour. A slip would be fatal. Perry wrapped his legs around the rope, to leave his hands free. The wind was so strong that the rope was blown away from the car several times, once nearly crashing into a bridge as the train hurtled under it. Seeing it just in time, in the lights of the train, Perry grasped the roof ledge and pulled himself towards the train. He missed death by inches.
He had to move quickly as well as carefully. The biting wind was almost unendurable. Wearing only fine kid gloves, his hands were becoming numb. He slapped them against his sides to keep his circulation going, then made his move.
Half an hour after the train pulled out of Syracuse, Daniel Mclnerney was startled by the sound of breaking glass. Grabbing his gun, he turned to see a revolver poking through the smashed window in the door. Just as he caught a glimpse of a masked head framed in the window, a voice called out, 'Hands up!'
A split second later both men fired at once. A bullet hit Mclnerney's gun and sent it flying back over his shoulder, breaking his fingers and smashing his wrist as it flew. With his good hand, he grabbed the air-whistle cord above his head and pulled it hard. No whistle sounded. He pulled again. 'Let go of that rope, damn you!' shouted the stranger. Mclnerney kicked out wildly to extinguish the lamp, plunging the car into darkness. A shot rang out and a bullet grazed his temple.
Dazed by the blow, he could hear the intruder climbing into the car and struggled desperately to pull the cord again. This time a third shot hit him in the thigh and floored him. The whole exchange had taken only seconds.
Too shocked to register much pain, Mclnerney could feel blood oozing from his leg. Perry struck a match and lit some waybills. In the light of the burning papers Mclnerney caught the full effect of the red mask and the two heavy revolvers. 'Damn you!' shouted Perry. 'You tried to kill me.'
Perry ordered Mclnerney to light the lantern, unlock the safes and put the money on one side. 'There is no money,' Mclnerney replied. Taken aback, Perry demanded that the messenger open the packages he had pulled out on to the floor. Sure enough, there was no cash, only jewellery and silverware. This wasn't right. He only wanted ready money this time, not goods that had to be sold. Mclnerney insisted that the money was being carried on another train. Perry didn't believe him and ordered him to start opening up the other packages.
Emil Laas, the conductor travelling in the rear car, thought he heard the air-whistle sound faintly. When he went to see if anything was wrong in the money car, he peered through a hole and saw the strange hooded figure. He signalled quickly to the engineer to slow down but the masked head emerged from the side window and shouted, 'God damn you, shove her ahead!' A bullet whizzed past and the conductor complied.
As the train steamed on, Perry was still trying to find the money, but he started to worry about Mclnerney who was losing a lot of blood and showing real pain now. 'Are you hurt much?' he asked. Then he leaned forward to examine the messenger's wounded face by the light of some burning waybills. But as he got close, he saw Mclnerney staring at him and pulled back. Even with the mask, he couldn't let the other man look too closely. It was too risky.
Then, as the train approached Port Byron, it started slowing down. The engine had been signalled to halt to let a coal train pass. As Laas jumped off and called for the station operator, Mclnerney appeared at the car door, swaying and mumbling incoherently. There was no sign of the masked man. He must, Laas thought, have jumped off the train before it had picked up speed.
In fact, as they slowed down at Port Byron Perry had silently swung up on to the car roof and packed the rope away in his satchel. Then he dropped off the train on the side away from the trainmen just before it stopped. He hid while the train was being searched and gathered his thoughts. A freight train, bound for Syracuse, was pulling out. Reckoning that he would be expected to try to get away on the freight train, he decided on a different course of action. He stowed away his disguise and other gear in his valise, and put on his hat and eyeglasses. Then he climbed back aboard the Express just before it set off for the next stop, the village of Lyons, and hid between cars.
When the train arrived in Lyons, Mclnerney was carried off for medical attention and the train was backed up on the number two track to take on water. Even though a messenger was seriously, perhaps fatally, wounded, the train would have to continue on to its destination as it had in the last robbery. When profits might be lost, the demands of the business outweighed the needs of its employees. Perry, meanwhile, slipped off on the far side, away from the platform, and walked swiftly along the track. Keeping hidden behind stationary train cars, he made his way to the street running up to the station. Then, cool as can be, he sauntered on to the platform as if coming to buy a ticket or meet a passenger. But his disguise, so often his best weapon, now proved his undoing.
While his train was refuelled, Emil Laas was discussing the robbery with the other railroad men, when he had his second shock of the night. At the far end, leaning casually against the station building, he saw a well-dressed young man he had noticed at the depot in Syracuse earlier that night. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but this didn't make sense. There was no way the man could have got to Lyons that quickly except on the Express. The man had to be the robber. He shouted to the others. They rushed at Perry, then stopped in their tracks when he levelled his revolvers at them and ordered them to stay away.
Keeping the guns trained on the men on the platform, Perry backed slowly across the tracks. A west-bound coal train was standing on track number three, waiting for the signal to pull out. He swiftly uncoupled the engine from the rest of the train. Then he climbed over the water tank and ordered the startle
d engineer and fireman off the cab at gunpoint. As the men on the platform looked on in disbelief, Perry pulled open the throttle like a seasoned engineer and gave four whistle blows to signal departure. Hearing the whistle, the flagman, unaware of the unfolding drama, signalled the okay and Perry's engine pulled out of the station. Laas and the others were momentarily stunned but swiftly set off after Perry in the uncoupled Express engine. One of the men had hastily grabbed a double-barrelled shotgun.
As they raced through the quiet of the early morning, the Express quickly gained ground on Perry's 'hog', as the older, slower freight engines were known. Near a bridge over the Erie Canal, halfway along the ten-mile stretch between Lyons and Newark to the west, Perry saw that he had no hope of outrunning his pursuers. He slammed on the brakes, threw his engine into reverse, and built up speed until the engine hurtled backwards towards the Express. Perry was turning a race he couldn't win into a duel. Bullets flew as the engines chased and faced each other until, out of ammunition and reluctant to tackle Perry unarmed, the trainmen returned to Lyons. Behind them, their quarry-turned-opponent steamed away towards Newark.
But Perry had been too busy changing direction and shooting at his pursuers to keep the engine stoked, so the steam started to give out. He might have struggled into Newark but he knew that the railroad men would have wired ahead and arranged a welcome party. So he abandoned the engine at Blue Cut, a couple of miles east, where he ordered a startled switchman to take the engine back to Lyons, and scrambled quickly up the embankment. When he reached the top, he looked around to see if anyone was watching, then set off into the countryside. Escape would not be easy. Heavy snowdrifts would make the going hard and the advancing daylight would help his pursuers.
The Engine Duel (Utica Saturday Globe).
By this time, the Rochester police force had been wired and were assembled at Rochester's Central station where they awaited the Express's arrival. Mclnerney was taken by ambulance to his parents' house, then, after questioning the crew, the policemen climbed aboard a specially requisitioned engine and set off on the thirty-five-minute run to Blue Cut. They telegraphed to Newark to have some local men meet them, but when they arrived at the Cut, no one was there. The crew of a passing freight train claimed to have seen Perry a short distance further east, so the police set off in that direction.
After struggling through the snow for some minutes, Perry spotted a farmhouse. Samuel Goetzman was in his kitchen having breakfast when there was a knock at his door. The caller, his face blackened by soot and sweat, told the farmer that he was a Pinkerton detective. He said he was chasing three men who had just robbed a train down on the Central and made off to the hills to the north. In order to pursue them he needed to borrow a horse.
Goetzman's first inclination was to shut the door. But after a great deal of persuasion, he reluctantly took the stranger to his barn. The man demanded to know which was his best horse. Goetzman pointed to a black mare. She was actually his second-best, but there was no reason for the stranger to know that. He asked the detective how he could be sure the mare would be returned. Perry was starting to explain that if anything happened to the horse he could sue American Express for compensation, when the farmer's wife walked in on them. When she realized what was happening, she flatly instructed her husband not to lend the stranger the horse. The mare happened to be her favourite, and if her husband was stupid enough to trust a total stranger, she was not.
Caught between civic and marital obligations, Goetzman asked if the 'detective' would show him his papers. The man replied that he didn't have any, but that his name was Cross. When Goetzman shook his head and said he needed some proof, Perry finally lost his temper. He grabbed a bridle from a hook on the wall and started to put it on the mare. While Goetzman stared, his wife tried to snatch the bridle off the stranger. He pulled it free, fitted it, and started leading the mare out of the barn. If he was determined to have the horse, Mrs Goetzman was equally resolved that he should not. Shouting at her husband, she tried to wrest the reins from the so-called detective. Fearful of losing any more time, Perry changed tactics. He pulled a revolver from his belt and pointed it at the woman.
The move worked. Goetzman rushed to find a blanket and strapped it on the mare. Keeping up his pretence, Perry demanded to know which was the best road to cut off the robbers' escape. The farmer told him to ride to the Blue Cut and turn right. He watched as Perry rode off, then took off after him in his cutter, a type of sleigh. At Blue Cut he saw, by the tracks in the snow, that Perry had gone left instead of right. Convinced now that the stranger was no detective, Goetzman called the local watchman who joined the chase.
The police, meanwhile, had realized that they were on a wild goose chase and doubled back to Blue Cut. There they tried to find someone to lend them horses or a cutter, but the local farmers were wary of all strangers. The city lawmen were greeted with as much suspicion as the bogus detective. Eventually a farmer agreed to drive them and they set off south in the direction taken by Perry.
Perry himself rode hard through the icy morning, anxious to keep ahead of the men he knew would be following. The snow had arrived about ten weeks earlier and few had travelled these roads since, as bare rock giving way to deep snowdrifts made the way perilous for horse or man. Eventually, about four miles on, Goetzman's second-best horse began to tire. Perry pulled up at a farm owned by another immigrant farmer, a Swede by the name of Frederick Beal. Beal was feeding his chickens when Perry rode into the yard. Assuming the stranger wanted to ride through his fields because the road was blocked with snow, Beal called out, 'You can't get through here, there's too much snow.'
'I don't intend to go through,' came the reply. 'I want one of your best horses, and one of the fastest, right off.' Beal asked what he wanted it for. Perry told him that he needed a horse and cutter to go to the aid of some men who were hurt down on the railroad. Beal started to ask what had happened and who Perry was. Unwilling to go through a repeat performance of the Goetzman conversation, Perry reached for his gun and fired a warning shot. Beal hitched up the cutter. Perry grabbed the reins, turned the cutter around so fast that it nearly toppled over, and sped out of the yard.
Soon every farmer and lad in the area were chasing Perry along the narrow tracks, on horseback, in cutters, buggies and carts. Few knew about the train robbery, but horse theft was about the worst crime a man could commit in the eyes of a Wayne County farmer.
Each time the farmers began to gain on Perry, at an awkward corner or a deep drift of snow, a shot from his revolver would keep them at bay until he was out of danger. One young man, Charlie Burnett, earned a new reputation for daredevil courage. Fired up by the thrill of the chase, he determined to be the one to catch the thief. Twice he forced Perry to change direction by shouting to wagons coming towards them in the opposite direction to block the road, making the robber turn down smaller side roads. Finally, he managed to overtake him and, trying to overturn his cutter by barging his horse against Perry's, forced him to turn abruptly into a log road that ran into Benton's swamp.
The combination of snow and half-frozen swamp water forced Perry to abandon the cutter after a few hundred yards. He struggled on, wading through the swamp, until he reached a scrubby wooded area at the far edge. Keeping a safe distance between themselves and Perry's guns, his pursuers discussed their next move. Behind the vanguard of angry farmers, three more groups had been advancing. First were the Rochester police in their commandeered cutter. Second was a large posse from Lyons. Third were local Pinkerton agents. Altogether, more than fifty men were now crowded at the edge of Benton's swamp.
It was about 11 o'clock. Perry had been on the run for at least five hours. Exhausted, numb with cold and now soaked to the skin, he found a half-collapsed stone wall. Unable to walk any further, he crouched down behind it. His pursuers had split up to surround him. Just before midday, someone spotted Perry. Knowing that the posse would eventually close in on him, he had built up the loose stones from the wall i
nto a sort of fortress. He knew that although he still had some ammunition, he could not win in any shoot-out with so many men. His only hope was to keep them at bay until nightfall and then try to creep away unseen. It was a long shot. There were hours to go before it would get dark, and he thought he heard someone in the posse call out a request to send to Lyons for long-distance rifles. For what felt like an age to everyone, there was a tense stand-off. No shots were fired and it seemed that both sides were playing a waiting game, to be decided by which arrived first, the long-distance rifles or nightfall.
'Is there an officer in the crowd?' It was Perry's voice from behind the barricade. T am,' shouted back Jeremiah Collins, the young deputy, known to everyone as Jerry. 'If you drop your gun and come on unarmed I'll talk with you,' Perry replied, 'but if you try to play me any tricks it will go hard with you.'
Ignoring all the warnings that he would get himself shot, Deputy Collins laid down his gun and walked across the open swamp towards Perry's improvised fortress, his hands clasped behind his back. Perry kept his gun trained on the approaching Deputy. 'Stop and hold your hands in front of you where I can see them.' Collins did so and moved forward again until he was standing against the wall in front of Perry.
'Is the messenger alive?' was the first thing Perry said. In the car he had been genuinely concerned about Mclnerney, who was about the same age and build as him, no tough guy. His plan had been to 'get the drop' on him, shock him into surrendering his gun, not have a shoot-out. But now he needed to know for another reason. If Mclnerney was dead or dying and he was facing a murder charge, there might be little reason to give himself up.
Collins said the messenger was alive and asked Perry to point the muzzle of the gun away from him. Perry hesitated, then laid it on the wall.
Wanted Man Page 3