CHAPTER FIVE
On the
Northern Pacific Railroad in Dakota Territory
Angus Ebersole had seven men with him.
In truth, it made his gang a little unwieldy by having so many, but
it also made him formidable. There were few posses that were this
large, and no target he ever selected would have as many guards as
he had men.
He was waiting now with his men along
the Northern Pacific Railroad for the train that would be coming
through in about half an hour. The train, he knew, would be
carrying the payrolls for Fort Lincoln, Fort Rice, and Fort
Harrison. The payrolls for three army posts would be a considerable
amount, enough money so that, even divided eight ways, it would
make this operation a very profitable one.
“Dewey, Hawkins, do you have the wood
laid out on the track?”
“Yeah, it’s all there. Think we ought
to light it yet?”
“Not yet, we don’t want it to burn down
too much before the train gets here.”
“Hey, Taylor, what are you going to do
with your money?” Peters asked.
“I’m goin’ down to Arizona where the
weather is warm and the Mexican girls is hot,” Taylor replied. “I’m
goin’ to get me a room, a case of tequila, and have me a different
señorita ever’ night.”
“Ha! Well, that sounds good enough for
me. What about you, Smitty?”
“I’m goin’ to find me a poker game,”
Smitty said. “And I’ll win ever’ hand ’cause I’ll buy the pots.
I’ll bet so much that the suckers won’t be able to match
me.”
“Nothin’ like spendin’ your money
before you got it,” Dewey said.
“Hush,” Ebersole said, holding his hand
up. “I think I hear it.”
Straining, the men could hear a distant
whistle.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Hawkins said.
“Hadn’t we better light the fire?”
“All right. Go ahead, get it started,”
Ebersole ordered.
Augmented by kerosene, the fire took
quickly, and was blazing brightly when they first saw the train.
From this distance, against the great panorama of the surrounding
mountains, the train seemed quite small.
Now they could hear the train easily,
the sound of its puffing engine carrying to them across the wide
valley, echoing back from the towering mountains. When they heard
the steam valve close and the train begin braking, Ebersole knew
that the engineer had spotted the fire and was going to stop.
Squealing, squeaking, and clanging, the train ground to a reluctant
halt, its stack puffing black smoke, its driver wheels wreathed in
tendrils of white steam drifting off into the night. The engineer’s
face appeared in the window, backlit by the orange glow of the
cab.
“What’s up?” the engineer asked.
“What’s the fire for? Is there track out ahead?”
“Get your hands up,” Ebersole
said.
“What? Good God man, are you telling me
this is a train robbery?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m tellin’ you.
Taylor, climb up there on the coal tender and keep your eyes on the
two of ’em.”
Falcon was sound asleep when the train
came to a sudden, screeching halt in the middle of the night. The
stop was so abrupt that it woke him up, and he slid the curtains
apart just long enough to look out into the aisle of the sleeper
car. He saw a porter.
“Porter, what happened?” he asked. “Why
did we stop?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the porter
answered. “I was sleepin’ in the back of the car my ownself. I
thought I might take a peek outside and see if I can find out what
it is.”
Falcon saw Cody sticking his head
through the curtains of the top bunk just across the aisle from
him, and Ingraham was looking out from the bottom
bunk.
“You have any idea what’s going on?”
Cody asked.
“No, but I don’t like it,” Falcon said.
“I think I’ll have a look around.”
“I’ll join you,” Cody
said.
Slipping back into the bunk, Falcon
pulled on his trousers and boots. Then, picking up his gun belt, he
stepped out into the aisle as he strapped it on. By now, several
others were looking out from the bunks: women, children, and men of
all ages. Many of them were talking back and forth, wondering why
the train had made such an abrupt stop in the middle of the
night.
Cody stepped out into the aisle with
Falcon and, like Falcon, had put on his gun belt. Ingraham stepped
out as well, though, unlike Falcon and Cody, he was unarmed. When
Falcon and Cody started toward the front of the car, Ingraham went
with them.
“Where are you going?” Cody
asked.
“With you two.”
“You stay here. We don’t know what’s
out there.”
“I know,” Ingraham said, his eyes
flashing with excitement. “That’s why I’m going with
you.”
When the three men stepped out of the
train they could see the steam drifting away from the engine, so
white against the dark night that it was almost luminescent. The
only light to be seen was that cast through the windows of the
coaches. A few of the windows were open and heads were poked
through, looking toward the front.
“You folks best keep your heads inside,
we don’t know what this is all about yet,” Falcon said as the three
men passed by the coaches on their walk to the front of the
train.
When they got close enough to the front
to see what was going on, they saw at least eight men, four mounted
and four dismounted. One of the dismounted men was on top of the
tender, pointing his gun toward the cab of the engine. The other
three were standing on the ground just outside the express
car.
“You may as well open the door,” one of
the men yelled. “Because we have dynamite, and if you don’t open it
we’ll blow this car all to hell.”
“Gentlemen!” Ingraham shouted. “You
have chosen the wrong train to rob. The two men with me or none
other than Falcon MacCallister and Buffalo Bill Cody!”
“Ingraham, what are you doing?” Cody
asked.
“I am helping these gentlemen
understand that they have made a big mistake,” Ingraham
said.
The three men on the ground turned
toward Falcon, Cody, and Ingraham and began firing, lighting the
night up with the bright flares of their muzzle flashes. Falcon and
Cody returned fire and all three went down.
“Damn, did you see that?” one of the
mounted men said. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Bring me my horse!” the man on the
coal-tender shouted, but the four riders who had been holding the
horses of the four who had dismounted rode away without responding
to his call.
“You no-count bastards!” the man on the
tender shouted. He pointed his gun at the retreating robbers, but
didn’t fire. Instead, realizing that Falcon and Cody were quickly
closing on him, he threw his pistol down, then put his hands
up.
“I give up, I give up!” he shouted.
“Don’t shoot! I ain’t makin’ no fight of it!”
“Climb down,” Falcon ordered, and,
meekly, the man did as ordered.
By now the train conductor, who had
been monitoring events from a safe place, came hurrying
up.
“Mr. MacCallister, Mr. Cody, the
Northern Pacific owes the two of you a big thank you for saving the
train,” the conductor said.
“MacCallister? Cody?” the outlaw said.
“You mean this here fella wasn’t lyin’? You really are Falcon
MacCallister and Buffalo Bill Cody?”
“They are indeed,” Ingraham said. “You
need not feel shame over being bested in your failed endeavor, for
you have been taken by the most famous and skilled shootists in the
world.”
“Who are you?”
“I sir, am merely a simple purveyor of
tales, a scribe who records the heroic deeds of such men as these.
I am sure you have heard of me. I am Prentiss
Ingraham.”
“Prentiss Ingraham?” The would-be train
robber shook his head. “No, can’t say as I have heard of
you.”
Ingraham was visibly
crestfallen.
Because the would-be robbers had
stopped the train by building a fire on the track, for the next
several moments the crew and men passengers of the train worked
feverishly to clear the path. They had to hurry, because another
train would be coming behind them within the next
hour.
“That’s no problem,” Ingraham said.
“Won’t the train engineer have his light on? He’ll just stop when
he sees us.”
“It won’t matter whether he has his
headlamp on or not,” Falcon replied.
“What do you mean it won’t matter? Of
course it will matter. If his headlamp is on, he will see
us.”
“Even if the engineer did see us, it
would be too late,” Falcon explained. “The purpose of the headlamp
is so people can see the train and get out of the way. Once the
train’s headlamp picks up something, it is already too late. The
train is so fast and so heavy that it is impossible for it to stop
within the limits of the headlamp.”
“So what you are saying is that if a
train approaches us, it will plow right into the back of us?”
Ingraham asked.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Falcon
replied.
“Let’s get busy then,” Ingraham said,
and he began working with renewed effort to clear the
track.
Angus Ebersole, Clay Hawkins, Ike
Peters, and Jim Dewey rode hard for the first mile, then stopped
atop a hill and looked back down at the track as the passengers and
train crew worked to clear it.
“I thought you said this would be
easy,” Hawkins complained.
“I didn’t say it would be easy, I said
it would pay off well,” Ebersole replied. “That train is carrying
army payrolls for three forts. There’s no tellin’ how much money is
there.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Hawkins said.
“The money is there, it ain’t here.”
“How was I to know that Falcon
MacCallister and Buffalo Bill would both be on that train?”
Ebersole asked. “There just ain’t no way of findin’ out about stuff
like that.”
“You think that was really them?” Dewey
asked.
“You seen how easy they cut down
Smitty, Hunt, and Collins, didn’t you?” Ebersole answered. “Yeah, I
think it was really them.”
“I didn’t know they was real,” Peters
said.
“What do you mean you didn’t think they
was real? You seen ’em, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I seen ’em. But like I said, I
didn’t think there was really any such people. I thought they was
like Santa Claus, I thought they was just somethin’ someone made up
to tell stories about.”
“They are real, all right,” Ebersole
said.
“What if we was to go back down there
now, catch ’em while they’re workin’?” Dewey said. “We might be
able to surprise ’em.”
“The rest of us might also get kilt,”
Ebersole said.
“Damn, and I ’bout had that money
spent,” Hawkins said.
“I reckon ole Billy Taylor won’t be
havin’ hisself none of them Mexican gals,” Dewey said.
“Won’t none of us be doin’ nothin’,”
Peters said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ebersole said,
turning his horse away from the track.
Bismarck, Dakota Territory
It was mid-morning when the train
rolled into Bismarck, Dakota Territory, where it was met by Mr.
I.W. Emmons, the station agent. Behind them the train, temporarily
at rest from its long run, wasn’t quiet. Because the engineer kept
the steam up, the valve continued to open and close in great,
heaving sighs. Overheated wheel bearings and gearboxes popped and
snapped as tortured metal cooled. On the platform all around them,
there was a discordant chorus of squeals, laughter, shouts, and
animated conversation as people were getting on and off the
train.
Told of the attempted robbery, the
station agent summoned Sheriff Walter Merrell, who took the
prisoner into custody. Within fifteen minutes of the arrival of the
train the entire town was aware of the attempted train robbery.
They also knew that the robbery was prevented by Falcon
MacCallister and Buffalo Bill Cody, two of the nation’s most
storied Western personalities.
The three would-be robbers who had
tried to gain access to the express car had succeeded, but only in
death. They had ridden the distance between the holdup attempt and
Bismarck in the express car. Now their bodies were removed and laid
out on the depot platform, waiting for the undertaker to call for
them.
As they lay there, scores of people
passed by to stare down at them in morbid curiosity. Though only
two men had been shooting at them, all three had multiple bullet
wounds in their torsos, and one had a bullet wound in his
forehead.
“Look at that. That was some good
shootin’,” one man said.
“Well, yeah, when you consider who it
was that shot them, you wouldn’t expect anything but good
shooting.”
“Who did you say shot them?” someone
asked.
“It was Falcon MacCallister and Buffalo
Bill Cody.”
“Wow. I sure wish I had been on the
train to see that.”
“I was on the train,” another said.
“But it was too dark to see anything but the muzzle
flashes.”
“It sure would have been something to
see.”
That same morning, Prentiss Ingraham
presented himself to Marshal Jewel, editor of the Bismarck Tribune. The Tribune had
been started by C.A. Lounsberry, and was made famous by its
coverage of Custer’s last fight at Little Big Horn, but Lounsberry
sold the paper in 1884 during his unsuccessful bid to be governor
of the territory.
“My good man, I am here to offer you
the sum of fifty dollars,” Ingraham said.
“Is that a fact? And just what do I
have to do for you for that fifty dollars?” Jewel
asked.
“Oh, you don’t understand, sir,”
Ingraham said. “It isn’t what you are going to do for me, it is
what I am going to do for you. I am Prentiss Ingraham, famous
author and journalist. It so happens that I was on the train, and
was a direct witness to the thrilling events involving Buffalo Bill
Cody, Falcon MacCallister, and the would-be train robbers. I am
offering you my services in writing the story for you. Normally, I
would get seventy-five, even one hundred dollars for the story, but
I am going to do it for you for the paltry sum of twenty-five
dollars.”
“Wait a minute,” Jewel said. “I am to
give you twenty-five dollars? I thought you were going to give me
fifty dollars.”
“Oh, but I am, my good man. Consider
that, by writing an article for you for the paltry sum of
twenty-five dollars, you are to the good in the difference my
efforts normally earn.”
The editor laughed. “Very well, Mr.
Ingraham. I confess that I have heard of you, and it may do my
paper well to have a story written by the famous author of so many
dime novels.”
Borrowing a pen and paper from Jewel,
Ingraham sat at a table in the back of the newspaper office and
began writing the story. He heard the train whistle announcing that
it was about to leave the station, but he was not concerned, for
Bismarck would be their last stop as passengers. From here
Ingraham, Falcon, and Cody would go by riverboat down the Missouri
to Standing Rock Reservation where they would speak with Sitting
Bull.
Ingraham composed the story quickly,
writing it with large and easily read strokes of the
pen.
Daring Train Robbery Foiled
FALCON MACCALLISTER AND
BUFFALO BILL CODY THE HEROES
BUFFALO BILL CODY THE HEROES
Account Told by
Prentiss Ingraham
This scribe is well known throughout
the world for penning epic and heroic tales of the valiant and
exciting exploits of America’s daring and intrepid Western heroes.
But rarely has the author of such tales been privileged to be a
personal witness to such courageous and audacious action as he was
last night when this humble chronicler of bold events was on hand
to see, with my own eyes, a performance so daring and so fearless
that it made the fictional accounts of the popular Prentiss
Ingraham novels pale in comparison.
This writer was on board the
Northern Pacific train somewhere east of Bismarck, in company with
Buffalo Bill Cody and Falcon MacCallister as part of our remarkable
transit across America, when the attack occurred. With the muzzle
flashes of their guns lighting up the dark night, eight armed and
ferocious robbers attempted a train robbery. Bullets were flying
through air as the outlaws went about manifesting their evil deed,
and all on board the train were fraught with terror.
All were frightened, that is,
except for the fearless duo of Buffalo Bill and Falcon
MacCallister. For, unbeknownst to the would-be perpetrators of this
dastardly crime, there were, among the passengers, two of America’s
most storied heroes. Cool and professional in the face of danger,
these two intrepid gentlemen, Falcon MacCallister and Buffalo Bill
Cody, engaged the road agents in a deadly gunfight. And whereas the
missiles launched by the outlaws flew through the night without
finding any targets, the bullets fired by the intrepid duo of
MacCallister and Cody wrought a terrible effect among the would-be
train robbers. Three of the desperadoes were killed outright when
struck by the well-aimed balls, and one was captured. The remaining
four retreated into the night like the cowards they
are.
Buffalo Bill Cody, as readers
of this newspaper may know, is the proprietor and chief performer
of the world famous Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West
Exhibition.
When Ingraham rejoined Falcon and Cody,
he was wearing a pistol.
“That’s something new,” Cody
said.
“I figured if I am going to live in the
Wild West, I may as well dress for the part,” Ingraham said.
“Especially in light of the excitement on board the train last
night.”
“I won’t ask you if you can use that,”
Cody said. “I’m sure you have been in enough wars by now that you
can handle it quite well.”
“As well as any of the cowboys in your
show, Cody,” Ingraham said.
Cody chuckled. “I don’t doubt
it.”