Holding Up a Train Page #3

"Holding Up a Train" is a short story by O. Henry that revolves around a clever and audacious train robbery. The tale follows a bandit who orchestrates the heist with unexpected twists and turns, showcasing O. Henry's signature wit and knack for surprise endings. As the story unfolds, themes of morality, love, and irony emerge, providing readers with both entertainment and thought-provoking insights into human nature. With its engaging characters and clever plot, the story exemplifies O. Henry's mastery of the short story format.

• Short story

								

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 visit at one of these havens of refuge, flung a
handful of gold and bills into the laps of the kids playing on the
floor, without knowing whether my contribution was a hundred dollars or
a thousand.

When old-timers make a big haul they generally go far away to one of
the big cities to spend their money. Green hands, however successful a
hold-up they make, nearly always give themselves away by showing too
much money near the place where they got it.

I was in a job in ’94 where we got twenty thousand dollars. We followed
our favourite plan for a get-away—that is, doubled on our trail—and
laid low for a time near the scene of the train’s bad luck. One morning
I picked up a newspaper and read an article with big headlines stating
that the marshal, with eight deputies and a posse of thirty armed
citizens, had the train robbers surrounded in a mesquite thicket on the
Cimarron, and that it was a question of only a few hours when they
would be dead men or prisoners. While I was reading that article I was
sitting at breakfast in one of the most elegant private residences in
Washington City, with a flunky in knee pants standing behind my chair.
Jim was sitting across the table talking to his half-uncle, a retired
naval officer, whose name you have often seen in the accounts of doings
in the capital. We had gone there and bought rattling outfits of good
clothes, and were resting from our labours among the nabobs. We must
have been killed in that mesquite thicket, for I can make an affidavit
that we didn’t surrender.

Now I propose to tell why it is easy to hold up a train, and, then, why
no one should ever do it.

In the first place, the attacking party has all the advantage. That is,
of course, supposing that they are old-timers with the necessary
experience and courage. They have the outside and are protected by the
darkness, while the others are in the light, hemmed into a small space,
and exposed, the moment they show a head at a window or door, to the
aim of a man who is a dead shot and who won’t hesitate to shoot.

But, in my opinion, the main condition that makes train robbing easy is
the element of surprise in connection with the imagination of the
passengers. If you have ever seen a horse that has eaten loco weed you
will understand what I mean when I say that the passengers get locoed.
That horse gets the awfullest imagination on him in the world. You
can’t coax him to cross a little branch stream two feet wide. It looks
as big to him as the Mississippi River. That’s just the way with the
passenger. He thinks there are a hundred men yelling and shooting
outside, when maybe there are only two or three. And the muzzle of a
forty-five looks like the entrance to a tunnel. The passenger is all
right, although he may do mean little tricks, like hiding a wad of
money in his shoe and forgetting to dig-up until you jostle his ribs
some with the end of your six-shooter; but there’s no harm in him.

As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than if
they had been so many sheep. I don’t mean that they are cowards; I mean
that they have got sense. They know they’re not up against a bluff.
It’s the same way with the officers. I’ve seen secret service men,
marshals, and railroad detectives fork over their change as meek as
Moses. I saw one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under
his seat and dig up along with the rest while I was taking toll. He
wasn’t afraid; he simply knew that we had the drop on the whole outfit.
Besides, many of those officers have families and they feel that they
oughtn’t to take chances; whereas death has no terrors for the man who
holds up a train. He expects to get killed some day, and he generally
does. My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold-up, is to line
up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may
be of some benefit to you. Another reason why officers are backward
about mixing things with a train robber is a financial one. Every time
there is a scrimmage and somebody gets killed, the officers lose money.
If the train robber gets away they swear out a warrant against John Doe
et al. and travel hundreds of miles and sign vouchers for thousands on
the trail of the fugitives, and the Government foots the bills. So,
with them, it is a question of mileage rather than courage.

I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is
the best card in playing for a hold-up.

Along in ’92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers
down in the Cherokee Nation, Those were their lucky days, and they got
so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what job
they were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were
going to hold up the M. K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the station
of Pryor Creek, in Indian Territory.

That night the railroad company got fifteen deputy marshals in Muscogee
and put them on the train. Beside them they had fifty armed men hid in
the depot at Pryor Creek.
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