When the travel to the hills began to slacken and the coaches to be better guarded than they had been in the earlier days of the gold excitement, the "agents," not finding their field as profitable as it had been before, started out to look for new fields in which to show their prowess, and fresh fields to conquer. They turned their attention to the railroads.
And thus it came about that a member of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association came to have much to do with them, in the story which is about to be related as well as in others of a like character. This member of the association is Mr. N. K. Boswell, a resident of Laramie City, Wyo., for several years back, who is now warden of the state penitentiary at Laramie City, and has frequently been sheriff of Albany county, and who has for very many years been considered one of the most efficient of Gen. Cook's assistants.
It was in August, 1878--August 14--that a bold attempt was made by a party of these road agents to commit one of the most fiendish crimes ever perpetrated by outlaws in any land. The party consisted of Frank James, one of the James brothers, but who went by the name of McKinney; of Dutch Charley, Frank Toll, Sim Wan, Big-Nosed George, Tom Reed, Sandy Campbell and Cully McDonald. They had come in from the northern country to a point on the Union Pacific railroad where it crosses the Medicine Bow river, eighty-two miles west of Laramie City, in Wyoming. The embankments of the road approaching the river are exceedingly steep, about sixty feet high, and are made of large, rough stone taken from the cuts in the road. A more jagged or more broken place than these embankments it would be difficult to imagine.
It was to this place that these road agents had come with the intention of throwing the west-bound passenger train, on the 14th of August, from the track, and of precipitating it down the embankment, hoping to kill or to badly cripple all the train operatives and passengers, and thus make easy work of the robbery, which was the purpose of the undertaking. To accomplish this task they had cut the telegraph wire at the point and had tied one end of a long piece of wire, after loosening the spikes, to a rail, the other end being in the hands of the robbers, who were secreted behind a convenient embankment. The plan was to pull the rail out just as the locomotive should reach it, and to tumble the entire train and its burden of treasure and humanity down this fill. The time as well as the place was well chosen, the train at that season of the year passing the spot about dusk.