CHAPTER XXIII.CONCLUSION.

“An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told.”

Ifthe reader has been disappointed in the fact that the hero of this narrative has not been vested with the glamour of princely wealth; that he has not been painted a knight-errant of more romantic type; and that a champion in the field of pillage and plunder should not wear golden spurs and a helmet of brass, the fault lies not with the author, but rather with the popular error which pre-supposes these fallacious results.

The stereotyped question of all interested in his career has been, “What did Rube Burrow do with his money?”

The accuracy of the statement is vouched for, that in all of the eight train robberies, from Ben Brook, Texas, to Flomaton, Ala., reckoning his share as equal with that of his companions in crime, Rube Burrow secured not exceedingfive thousand five hundred dollars. He invested, in the spring of 1887, about four hundred dollars by purchasing a one-half interest, with his brother, in a few acres of land in Texas. Soon after the Genoa robbery he purchased for sixteen hundred dollars the farm onwhich his father now resides in Lamar County, paying four hundred dollars cash and giving his note for twelve hundred dollars. A few weeks after the Buckatunna robbery this note, through his father, was paid, some of the currency used being subsequently identified as part of that stolen at Buckatunna. The residue, the pitiful sum of three thousand five hundred dollars, was spent in the vain endeavor to avoid the ceaseless pursuit organized against him, and which made the latter years of his life an intolerable burden.

In the autumn of 1889 Rube Burrow made, through one of his kinsmen, a proposition to the officers of the Southern Express to surrender, upon the condition that he would not be tried for the murder of Hughes or Graves. The proposition was, of course, promptly declined.

L. C. Brock,aliasJoe Jackson, stated, after his arrest, that he had at one time made up his mind to seek an interview with Detective Jackson, with a view of making some conditions for his own surrender, but Rube’s proposition having been declined he gave up the project.

Although lawless by instinct, training and ambition, these men had drunk the bitter cup of crime to the dregs, and longed, no doubt, to enfranchise themselves from the toils that beset them, and which, like an avenging Nemesis, pursued them to the end.

The Southern Express Company expended, independentlyof all rewards, about twenty thousand dollars in the hunting down of this band of train robbers. The total rewards offered for Rube Burrow amounted to about $3,500. The rewards of $1,000 by the United States Government, and $250 by the State of Mississippi, have been, so far, withheld, because the language of the statutes, both Federal and State, under which the rewards were offered, required conviction in the courts.

Inspector A. G. Sharp, of the United States Postal Service, who has been very zealous in urging that the rewards offered by the Government be paid, writes under date of December 17, 1890, as follows:

“While in Washington recently, I laid the matter of reward for Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson before the Postmaster-General and the Chief Inspector, and strongly urged that the rewards for both be paid, and the question of conviction be waived. I believe the claims to be just, and that good policy suggests prompt payment. I feel satisfied that the Postmaster-General will accept my advice in the matter, and that the rewards for both will be paid in full. Of this, however, I can not speak positively; but from the reply made by the Postmaster-General, to my earnest solicitation, I feel justified in saying that I have strong reasons for believing that he will make the order allowing the rewards.”

All other rewards for Rube Burrow have been paid to Carter and his associates. The rewards for Brock and Smith, excepting those offered by the Government and the State of Mississippi, have also been paid to the parties interested.

William Brock, of Texas, was in nowise related to L. C. Brock. The two men never met, and that two of Burrow’s clansmen bore the same name was merely a coincidence.

The question recurs, “Does train-robbing pay?”

Here were men whose untoward inclinings, fostered by evil association, inflamed them with a passion for lawlessness. Their brawny arms were uplifted against the laws of God and man for ambition’s sake. They loved pillage for booty’s sake.

Behold the hapless fate of the five men who linked their fortunes together, commencing with the date of the Genoa robbery in December, 1887. William Brock, although sentenced to a short term of imprisonment, will carry to his grave the stigma of an ex-convict. Rube Smith has entered the gloomy portals of a prison, in which he is doomed to spend the remaining days of his life—a fate more horrible than death.

Rube Burrow, Jim Burrow and L. C. Brock lie in unhallowed graves, their memories kept alive only by the recollection of their atrocious deeds, leaving their kindred and friends to realize the bitter truth that

“The evil that men do lives after them;The good is oft interred with their bones.”

“The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones.”

Verily, “the way of the transgressor is hard”—“for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

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