Wanted—Gill Haney, (rain
Robber— Dead or Alive!

Engineer at Throttle of West-bound Express Feels Cold Steel at Temple and Is
Ordered to Stop—Masked Men Hold Up Express Co.’s Car—Bullion Hid and
Bandits Foiled—Posses in Search—Special Constable Decker Murdered After

“STOP THAT man! He’s a murderer.”

That piercing cry rang through the still-
ness of a cool, summer evening across the
swirling waters of the North Thompson
River at Ashcroft, British Columbia. More
than fifty people heard it. They stopped to
gaze at a powerfully built man who strode
purposefully towards the railroad tracks
paralleling the road. They saw him break
into a jog trot when he reached the road
and run eastward. Not a person moved to
stop him.

A few hundred yards further on, a
woman, who was driving her daughters to
Ashcroft, saw the man running. She, noticed
that he carried a gun.

“T heard a lot of shooting in town,” she
called to him. “Can you tell me what the
trouble is?”

The man scowled and raced on.

The man, still in sight of the crowd, ran
on, suddenly turned at right angles tc the
railroad track and disappeared over the brow
of a hill. Behind him lay two dead men.
Ahead, a lifetime destined to be spent in
dodging the law. For the man who ran over
that hill and out of the ken of organised
society was Bill Haney, the last of the old-
time tra‘n robbers. From that day on he
has never been seen by the authorities. He
has been hunted in every town and city in
the United States and Canada. Even the
Bering Sea was searched for a man said
to resemble him. But he is still at large with
a reward of $4,000 on his head.

The events leading up to this dramatic
moment had been lurid and sensational in
their violent sequence. They began when
such famous names as Harvey Logan, Butch
Cassidy, Bill Miner and other notorious
desperadoes were breaking the headlines
wide open by their reckless train robberies.
In 1906 Bill Miner led a gang who held
up a Canadian Pacific Railway west-bound
express at Silverdale, a few miles from
Vancouver, British Columbia, and escaped
with $7,000. It was said, but never proven,
that the Haney brothers were members of
the gang. Though hotly pursued by Can-
adian and American police and hunted by
the Pinkertons, Miner and his men made a
clean getaway.

Emboldened by the success of his first
job, Miner returned to Canada in 1908 and
held up another C. P. R. express at Ducks,

WINTER EDITION

Killing Attacker—Fugitive Evades Capture.

a few miles east of Kamloops. This time
he was not so lucky. He obtained no loot
and was captured a few days later with
two of his gang, Smiling Louis Colquhoun
and Shorty Dunn. Miner was given a life
sentence for this but escaped from the New
Westminster Penitentiary in less than a
year.

Life along the railroad settled back to
normal after this. The mountain moguls
thundered along the rails, up long grades
and roared through the canyons. Engineers,
ever alert for rock slides, had little time

Canadian Pacific Railway

to think of train robbers. Their eyes must
not leave those twisting ribbons of steel,
not even for a minute, for disaster might
be just around the next bend. Train robbers
were irksome, but mountain schedules must
be maintained.

C. P. R. Express HELp Up

Engineer Matt Crawford’s gloved hand
was on the throttle of No. 97, Canadian
Pacific’s crack west-bound express. It was
just a few minutes before twelve o'clock on
the night of June 22nd, 1909. The last stop
had been at Notch Hill and now Crawford
was giving his giant engine everything she'd
take so he could roll his train in to Kam-
loops on time. In a few minutes now he

pe Sod

Express near Ducks, B. C.

MORTON L. BENNET

*

would be near Ducks, the scene of a hold-
up only a year ago. Crawford, intent on
keeping to schedule, had forgotten about
it. He inched his throttle open a little
wider and the sharp staccato of the exhaust
rose to a drumming roar as the heavy train
lurched around the banked bends. Sudden-
ly he tensed. A ring of cold steel was pres-
sed against his left ear.

“Just do as I tell you or I'll blow your
head off.”

Crawford turned slowly. He was looking
at a big man who wore two red bandana

handkerchiefs; one around his head, the
other below his eyes. Two big colt revolvers
filled his hands.

“You'll see a signal fire alongside the
track. Stop this train at that fire. Under-
stand?”

Crawford nodded. He was about to make
a facetious reply when the bandit snarled:
“No funny business or you'll be the first
to get it.”

The engineer knew the man was in
deadly earnest. He was apparently not
nervous. Crawford leaned from his cab
window, his eyes fixed for the first flicker
of the fire. Then he saw it. He shut off the
steam and applied the air. Sparks flew from
the brake shoes as the big transcontinental

Page Fifty-one

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