the livery and two 50-pound cases of No. 1 dynamite at Tom Child’s trading store, and on Thursday morning they rode out of Gila. They rode south two miles before turning west and doubling back to follow the train tracks.
They arrived in sight of the Southern Pacific water stop at Sentinel that evening and from a grove of trees studied the wooden buildings and frame structure that stood silently against a dark line of palo verdes. A water tank, a coaling shed, a section house and a little one-room station with a light showing in the window, that’s all there was here.
As soon as Virgil saw the place he knew Frank was right again. Sometimes it made him mad when he sounded dumb in front of his brother. He had finished the sixth grade and Frank had gone on to the seventh or eighth. Maybe when Frank was looking at him, waiting, he would say the wrong thing or sound dumb; but Jesus, he had gone into places with a gun and put the gun in a man’s face and got what he wanted. Frank didn’t have to worry about him going in with a gun. He had not found out the important facts of the matter talking to the railroad people. He had not thought up the plan in all the time he’d had to do it. But he could sure do what Frank said in his letter. He had three good boys who would go with him for two hundred and fifty dollars each and bring the guns and know how to use them. These boys drank too much and got in fights, but they were the captains for this kind of work. Try and pick them. Try and get three fellows who had the nerve to stop a prison train and take off the people you wanted and do it right, without a lot of shooting and getting nervous and running off into the desert and hiding in a cave. He wished he had more like them, but these three said they could do the job and would put their guns on anybody for two hundred and fifty dollars.
He had a man named Howard Crowder who had worked for railroad lines in both the United States and Mexico, before he turned to holding up trains and spent ten years in Yuma.
He had an old hand named Dancey who had ridden with him and Frank before, and had been with them at the Cornelia Mine payroll robbery and had got away.
He had a third one named Billy Santos who had smuggled across the border whatever could be carried and was worth anything and knew all the trails and water holes south of here.
Five o’clock the next morning it still looked good and still looked easy as they walked into the little station at Sentinel with their suitcases and asked the S.P. man when the next eastbound train was coming through.
The S.P. man said 8:56 this morning, but that train was not due to stop on account of it was carrying convicts some place.
Virgil asked him if there was anybody over in the section house. The S.P. man said no, he was alone. A crew had gone out on the 8:45 to Gila the night before and another crew was coming from Yuma sometime today.
Virgil looked over at Billy Santos. Billy went outside. Howard Crowder and Dancey remained sitting on the bench. The suitcases and bedrolls and rifles and two cases of dynamite were on the floor by them. No, the S.P. man behind the counter said, they couldn’t take the 8:56, though they could get on the 8:48 this evening if they wanted to hang around all day. But what will you do with your horses? he said then. You rode in here, didn’t you?
Virgil was at the counter now. He nodded to the telegrapher’s key on the desk behind the S.P. man and said, “I hope you can work that thing, mister.”
The S.P. man said, “Sure, I can work it. Else I wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s good,” Virgil said. “It’s better if they hear a touch they are used to hearing.”
The S.P. man gave Virgil a funny look, then let his gaze shift over to the two men on the bench with all the gear in front of them. They looked back at him; they didn’t move or say anything. The S.P. man was wondering if he should send a message to the division office at Gila; tell them there were three dudes hanging around here with rifles and dynamite and ask if they had been seen in Gila the day before. He could probably get away with it. How would these people know what he was saying? Just then the Mexican-looking one came back in, his eyes on the one standing by the counter, and shook his head.
Virgil said, “You all might as well get dressed.”
The S.P. man watched them open the suitcases and take out gray and white convict suits. He watched them pull the pants and coats on over the clothes they were wearing and shove revolvers down into the pants and button the coats. One of them brought a double-barrel shotgun out of a suitcase in two pieces and sat down to fit the stock to the barrels. Watching them, the S.P. man said to Virgil Shelby, “Hey, what’s going on? What is this?”
“This is how you stop a train,” Virgil told him. “These are prisoners that escaped off the train that come through the day before yesterday.”
“Nobody escaped,” the S.P. man said.
Virgil nodded up and down. “Yes, they did, mister, and I’m the deputy sheriff of Maricopa County who’s going to put them back on the train for Florence.”
“If you’re a deputy of this county,” the S.P. man said, “then you’re a new one.”
“All right,” Virgil said, “I’m a new one.”
“If you’re one at all.”
Virgil pulled a .44 revolver from inside his coat and pointed it in the S.P. man’s face. He said, “All you got to do is telegraph the Yuma depot at exactly six A.M. with a message for the prison superintendent, Mr. Everett Manly. You’re going to say three escaped convicts are being held here at Sentinel and you request the train to stop and take them aboard. You also request an immediate answer and, mister,” Virgil said, “I don’t want you to send it one word different than I tell it to you. You understand?”
The S.P. man nodded. “I understand, but it ain’t going to work. If three were missing at the head-count when they got to Florence, they would have already told Yuma about it.”
“That’s a fact,” Virgil said. “That’s why we had somebody wire the prison from Phoenix Wednesday night and report three missing.” Virgil looked around then and said, “Howard?”
The one named Howard Crowder had a silver dollar in his hand. He began tapping the coin rapidly on the wooden bench next to him in sharp longs and shorts that were loud in the closed room. Virgil watched the expression on the S.P. man’s face, the mouth come open a little.
“You understand that too?” Virgil asked him.
The S.P. man nodded.
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Send correct message or you are a dead man.’ ”
“I’m happy you understand it,” Virgil said.
The S.P. man watched the one named Dancey pry open a wooden case that was marked
At six A.M. he sent the message to the depot at Yuma, where they would then be loading the convicts onto the train.
The Southern Pacific equipment that left Yuma that Friday morning was made up of a 4-4-0 locomotive, a baggage car, two day coaches for regular passengers (though only eleven people were aboard), another baggage car, and an old wooden coach from the Cannanea-Rio Yaqui-El Pacifico line. The last twenty-seven convicts to leave the prison were locked inside this coach along with Bob Fisher and three armed guards. Behind, bringing up the rear, was a caboose that carried Mr. Manly and three more guards.
Bob Fisher had personally made up the list of prisoners for this last run to Florence: only twenty-seven, including Frank Shelby and his bunch. Most of the others were short-term prisoners and trusties who wouldn’t be expected to make trouble. A small, semi-harmless group which, Bob Fisher believed, would make it easy for him to keep an eye on Shelby. Also aboard were the TB convicts, the two women and Harold Jackson and Raymond San Carlos.
Harold and Raymond were near the rear of the coach. The only ones behind them were Bob Fisher and the guards. Ahead of them were the TB convicts, then two rows of empty seats, then the rest of the prisoners scattered along both sides of the aisle in the back-to-back straw seats. The two women were in the front of the coach. The doors at both ends were padlocked. The windows were glass, but they were not made to open.
Before the train was five minutes out of Yuma every convict in the coach knew they were going to stop in Sentinel to pick up three men who had escaped on Wednesday and had been recaptured the next day. There was a lot of talk about who the three were.
Bob Fisher didn’t say a word. He sat patiently waiting for the train to reach Sentinel, thinking about the
