at train up
in broad daylight. Five of us lay in the sand hills near a little
station. Ten soldiers were guarding the money on the train, but they
might just as well have been at home on a furlough. We didn't even
allow them to stick their heads out the windows to see the fun. We
had no trouble at all in getting the money, which was all in gold. Of
course, a big howl was raised at the time about the robbery. It was
Government stuff, and the Government got sarcastic and wanted to know
what the convoy of soldiers went along for. The only excuse given was
that nobody was expecting an attack among those bare sand hills in
daytime. I don't know what the Government thought about the excuse,
but I know that it was a good one. The surprise--that is the keynote
of the train-robbing business. The papers published all kinds of
stories about the loss, finally agreeing that it was between nine
thousand and ten thousand dollars. The Government sawed wood. Here are
the correct figures, printed for the first time--forty-eight thousand
dollars. If anybody will take the trouble to look over Uncle Sam's
private accounts for that little debit to profit and loss, he will
find that I am right to a cent.

By that time we were expert enough to know what to do. We rode due
west twenty miles, making a trail that a Broadway policeman could have
followed, and then we doubled back, hiding our tracks. On the second
night after the hold-up, while posses were scouring the country in
every direction, Jim and I were eating supper in the second story of
a friend's house in the town where the alarm started from. Our friend
pointed out to us, in an office across the street, a printing press at
work striking off handbills offering a reward for our capture.

I have been asked what we do with the money we get. Well, I never
could account for a tenth part of it after it was spent. It goes
fast and freely. An outlaw has to have a good many friends. A highly
respected citizen may, and often does, get along with very few, but a
man on the dodge has got to have "sidekickers." With angry posses and
reward-hungry officers cutting out a hot trail for him, he must have
a few places scattered about the country where he can stop and feed
himself and his horse and get a few hours' sleep without having to
keep both eyes open. When he makes a haul he feels like dropping some
of the coin with these friends, and he does it liberally. Sometimes I
have, at the end of a hasty