[THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK, NORTHFIELD, MINN. (1876).]
THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK, NORTHFIELD, MINN. (1876).
The band had now divided, Pitts and the three Youngers forming one division, and the two Jameses the other. It is believed to have been the James brothers whom Roberts fired upon. Continuing their flight, they stole a fine span of grey, on which they mounted bareback. This capture was a most fortunate one for them, and enabled them to make rapid progress and to assume again the role of officers in pursuit of criminals. They had no difficulty in getting food and information from unsuspecting people, who found only too late how they had been imposed upon. The two men went almost due west during the next forty-eight hours, travelling day and night at the utmost practicable speed, and making eighty miles with scarcely a halt. On Sunday, September 17th, they crossed the Minnesota line into what is now South Dakota. That evening they took the liberty of exchanging their over-driven greys for a span of blacks, one of which proved to be blind in one eye and the other in both. Not finding these satisfactory, they exchanged them in turn, in the small hours of Monday morning, for another span of greys. They now turned southward; passed through Sioux Falls; exchanged salutations with the driver of the Yankton stage, and clothes with a Sioux City doctor; and quietly pursued their flight by a route and to a destination best known to themselves.
They had not been permitted to make this escape without interference. No sooner was it known that they had gone through the picket-line than scouts were sent out in every direction, to overtake or intercept them. The best men in the field took up the trail. The most comprehensive measures were adopted for their capture. But owing perhaps to the unexpected celerity of their movements, so different from the previous methods of the gang, and to unforeseen slips and miscalculations, they succeeded in eluding their pursuers, most of whom abandoned the chase at the Dakota line.
This episode had entirely diverted attention from the rest of the band, as it was not then known that a division had taken place; and when the two horsemen were finally lost track of, the general supposition was that the whole band had escaped. Some persons, indeed, believed that the four unaccounted for were still in the neighborhood in which they had last been seen. The disreputable house near Mankato, already referred to as the place where two of the robbers were known to have been on the night of September 3d, was searched, and many suspicious characters in various places were arrested and investigated. This vigilance resulted in securing some criminals, including two notorious horse-thieves, but it discovered no clue to the bank-robbers.