PREFACE.
Sincethe days of the James and Younger brothers, bold types of Western outlawry, which were the immediate products of the late civil war, no banditti have challenged such universal attention as those led by the famous outlaw, Rube Burrow. The press of the country has woven, from the wildest woof of fancy, full many a fiction touching his daring deeds, and manufacturers of sensational literature have made of the bandit as mystical a genius as the “Headless Hessian of Sleepy Hollow.”
With the view of correcting the erroneous accounts heretofore given the public, I have yielded to the solicitations of many friends in the Express service and consented to give a faithful and accurate history, compiled from the official reports of the detectives, detailing the daring deeds, the thrilling scenes and hair-breadth escapes of the outlaw and his band of highwaymen. Importantconfessions of some of the principal participants in the eight train robberies committed, covering a period of nearly four years, are also given, without color of fiction or the caprice of fancy.
It is the province of this volume, therefore, not to laud evil endeavor, but rather to chronicle the hapless fate of those who, turning aside from the paths of peace and honor, elect to tread the devious and thorny road which leads on to the open gateway, over which is emblazoned, in letters of living fire, the accursed malediction, “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
G. W. Agee.
Memphis, Tenn., December, 1890.