Great American Adventure Stories

by Tom McCarthy

  Meantime Mr. Allen, who had also sounded so prompt and vigorous an alarm, ran to his store, where he had a number of guns, and, loading them with such ammunition as came to his hand, gave them to anybody who would take them. One of them was taken by Mr. Elias Stacy, who used it to good purpose in the battle that followed.

  As Mr. Allen went to his own store, he had passed that of Mr. Manning, to whom he shouted his warning concerning the robbers. Up to this time, Manning had no suspicion of what was going on. One of the robbers had been in the store in the forenoon, looking about and pretending he wanted to buy a gun. He was a genteel, well-dressed fellow, and Manning supposed him to be some stranger who had come to Northfield to hunt, though he did not believe that he wanted any gun and thought there was something wrong about him. Even when the three horsemen dashed through the square so noisily and belligerently, he thought little of it. But when he heard Allen’s shout and made out the words “robbing the bank,” he recalled what he had seen, and the meaning of it all flashed upon his mind. Abruptly leaving the customer he was serving, he rushed for a weapon, thinking hard and fast. Pistols? No; they would be of little account. His shotgun? Yes—no; he had left all his loaded cartridges at home. His breach-loading rifle! That was the thing, and here it was in the window, and there in a pigeonhole of his desk were the cartridges, where they had been carelessly thrown months before. All this came to him without an instant’s loss of time. He forgot nothing, and he made no mistakes. Stripping the rifle of its cover and seizing a handful of cartridges, he hurried to the scene of battle, loading as he ran.

  The scene on the street is indescribable. People had not only made haste to get out of the way of the leaden hailstorm that had burst forth but had also taken measures to protect themselves and their property against the raiders, whose intention was believed to be not only to rob the bank but to pillage the entire town. Stores and offices were hastily closed. The postmaster, Capt. H. S. French, who chanced to have an exceptionally heavy registered mail on hand that day, hastened to lock it in the safe and close the office. Jewelers and others who had valuable and portable stock pursued a similar course. The news of the invasion, emphasized by the sound of the shooting, spread swiftly through the town. Warning was sent to the public school and to Carleton College to keep the students off the streets. The general impression was that the town was in possession of a horde of robbers, numbering nobody knew how many and coming nobody knew whence, and bent on ruthless plunder, nobody knew to what extent.

  The scene of the actual conflict was that part of Division Street on which the bank faced and scarcely a full block in length. Here the five mounted robbers went riding back and forth, up one side of the street and down the other, doing their utmost with voice and arms to keep up the reign of terror which they had begun. The citizens whom they had driven in were looking for weapons, and the bolder ones were coming back, some armed and some unarmed, around the margin of the field. Capt. French, having made Uncle Sam’s property as secure as possible, stood in front of the locked door, wondering where he could soonest find a gun. Justice Streater and ex-policeman Elias Hobbs stepped out into the square, empty-handed but undaunted and determined to do something by way of resistance to the invasion. A few were so fortunate as to have not only the courage but the means for an armed defense. Mr. Stacy, already referred to, came out with a fowling piece and, confronting Miller, just as the latter was mounting his horse, fired at his head. The fine bird shot marked the robber’s face, and the force of the charge knocked him back from the saddle but inflicted no serious wound. There was a poetic justice in the incident, as it was Allen, whom Miller had seized and threatened at the bank, who owned and loaded the gun and sent it out in the hands of his neighbor to draw first blood from the very man that had assaulted its owner.

  Later on in the battle, Messrs. J. B. Hyde, Ross Phillips, and James Gregg also did their best with similar weapons, and it was not their fault that the shotguns they used upon the bandits were inadequate to the occasion. Mr. Hobbs, who had no weapon at all, fell back upon more primitive methods and, at the height of the fray, came on shouting, “Stone ’em! Stone ’em!” and suiting the action to the word and choosing not “smooth stones from the brook” but big and formidable missiles more fit for the hand of Goliath than for the sling of David, hurled rocks and curses at the enemy and not without effect. Col. Streater also joined in this mode of warfare, which, if not the most effective, certainly evinced as high a degree of courage as they could have shown in the use of the most approved weapon. Other citizens, too, took a hand in the affair, as opportunity offered, and some of them had narrow escape from the bullets with which the robbers responded to their attentions.

  But while there was no lack of good intentions on the part of others, it was the two men with rifles, Manning and Wheeler, who were able to do real execution upon the enemy and finally to put them to rout. We go back, therefore, to the moment when Manning came running from his store with the rifle in his hand. Taking in the situation at a glance and intent only upon getting at the robbers, he stepped out into the open street and, amid a shower of bullets, coolly looked for his game. Before him stood the horses of the men who were still in the bank, and over the heads of the horses, he saw the heads of two men, upon whom he instantly drew a bead. The men ducked behind the horse, whereupon Manning, without lowering his gun, changed his aim and shot the nearest horse, rightly judging that this would cripple the band almost as effectually as shooting the men. He then dropped back around the corner to reload, but finding to his chagrin that the breach lever would not throw out the empty shell, he was obliged to go back to the store and get a ramrod with which to dislodge it, thus losing valuable time. The interruption proved a good thing for him, however, moderating his excitement and rashness and preparing him to do better execution. Soon he was at the corner again. Peering around the corner, he saw one of the robbers between the horses and the bank door and fired at him. The ball grazed the edge of a post, deflecting it slightly, but it found Cole Younger, wounding him in a vulnerable though not vital place. Again Manning dropped back to reload. The shell gave him no trouble this time, and he was quickly at his post once more. As he looked cautiously around the corner, he saw Stiles sitting on his horse, some seventy-five or eighty yards away, apparently doing sentry duty in that part of the street. Manning took deliberate aim at him—so deliberate as to excite the impatience and call forth the protests of some who were near him—and fired, shooting the man through the heart. Manning, as before, stepped back to reload; the robber fell from his saddle, dead; and the horse ran to a livery stable around the corner.

  While these things were going on, Dr. Wheeler was not idle. His first shot was at the head of Jim Younger, who was riding by. The gun carried high, and the ball struck the ground beyond him. Younger looked first at the spot where it struck and then turned to see where it came from but did not discover the sharpshooter at the window above him. Wheeler’s next shot was at Clel Miller, whom Stacy had already peppered with bird shot. The bullet passed through his body almost precisely as Pitts’s bullet had passed through Bunker’s, but in this case the great artery was severed, and almost instant death ensued. Wheeler’s third and last cartridge had fallen upon the floor, bursting the paper of which it was made and spilling the powder. Hurrying in search of more, he met his friend Dampier coming with a fresh supply.

  The robbers were now badly demoralized. Their shooting had been wild and fruitless. They had lost two men and a horse killed; a third man was wounded; two riderless horses had escaped from them, and an armed force had cut off their proposed line of retreat. It was at this juncture that Cole Younger rode to the door of the bank and shouted to the men inside to come out, which they made all haste to do. Two of the men mounted their horses, which still stood before the door. There was no horse for Bob Younger, and he was compelled to fight on foot.

  By this time Manning and Wheeler had both reloaded and returned to their places. A
s Manning showed himself, ready to renew the battle, Bob Younger came running toward him down the sidewalk. Manning raised his rifle to shoot at the approaching robber, and at the same instant, Younger drew his revolver to shoot Manning. In the effort to get out of each other’s range, Younger dodged under the outside stairway of the Scriver Block, while Manning stood at the corner beyond it. The stairs were thus between them, and neither of them could get a shot at the other without exposing himself to the fire of his adversary. For a time they kept up a game of hide and seek, each trying in vain to catch the other off his guard and get the first shot. At this point Wheeler, though he could but imperfectly see Younger’s body beneath the stair, took a shot at him. The ball struck the robber’s elbow, shattering the bone. He then coolly changed his pistol to his left hand and continued his efforts to shoot Manning.

  It then occurred to Manning that, by running around through the store, he might reach the street on the other side of the robber and so drive him from his hiding place. This plan he instantly put in execution. At the same moment, Wheeler was engaged in reloading his gun. But the robbers had their plans, too, and took advantage of this momentary lull to make their escape. Bob Younger sprang from his hiding place and ran up Division Street, where he mounted behind his brother Cole, and the entire band—or at least what was left of it—turned and fled. Wheeler returned to his window, and Manning emerged upon the sidewalk only to find that their game had flown. Even then there was an excellent chance for long-range shooting, but the intervening distance was immediately filled with people, making it impossible to shoot without endangering innocent lives.

  This battle between desperadoes and peaceful citizens has well been cited as proof that the prowess, courage, and dead-shot skill at arms commonly ascribed to the border ruffian are largely imaginary. On the one side was a band of heavily armed and thoroughly trained and organized banditti, carrying out a carefully made plan in their own line of business after weeks of preparation. On the other side was a quiet, law-abiding community, unused to scenes of violence, taken utterly by surprise and at a fearful disadvantage, with no adequate means of defense except two long-disused rifles in out-of-the-way places and one of them on the retired army list. Yet the banditti were beaten at their own game, and their courage lasted only while the odds were in their favor. As to marksmanship, they were vastly outdone by their citizen opponents. Excepting the cold-blooded murder of a defenseless spectator, they did not in the entire fight fire one effective shot. It is said that at least thirty shots were fired at Manning alone, yet he escaped without a scratch.

  In the bank, heroism of another order had displayed itself. Without the excitement of open battle or the stimulus of numbers and without the slightest means or opportunity for defense, the three unarmed young men balked the three armed ruffians who held them in their power, meeting threats and violence with passive resistance and, in the face of death itself, refusing to yield one jot to the demands of their assailants.

  The brunt of this unequal contest fell upon poor Heywood. How he met it has been already related. Threatened, assaulted, dragged about, brutally struck down, menaced with the knife, ostensibly shot at, he could not be persuaded or bullied into surrendering his trust or becoming the accomplice of robbers. It is interesting to know that, before this ordeal came to him, he had been led to ask himself what he would do in such an emergency and had made up his mind that he would under no circumstances give up the property of his employers. His steadfast resistance to the robbers’ demands, therefore, was not due to a hesitating policy or to the mere obstinate impulse of the moment but was the result of a deliberate purpose and conviction of duty. The fatal cost of his fidelity was something which he could not have failed to take account of all along as the most probable end of a struggle with such desperate men as he was dealing with. At a time when we hear so often that persons in similar circumstances have been compelled to unlock vaults or to open safes at the dictation of robbers, there is a wholesome tonic in the example of a man who proved that there is not in the whole world of criminal force a power that can overcome one brave man who chooses at all hazards to do his duty.

  The battle was over. So swift had been its movement, so rapidly had its events followed one another, that it was done before people beyond its immediate vicinity knew that it had begun. From its opening to its closing shot, it had occupied but seven minutes. But it had been as decisive as it was brief. The object of the attack had failed. The funds of the bank were intact. Six of the robbers were in flight, two of them wounded. In front of the bank lay the dead horse, the first victim of the fight. Nearby was the body of Clel Miller, and a half block away, on the other side of the street, that of Stiles. Of the three deaths, that of the horse alone moved the pity of the spectators. On every hand were shattered windows, the work of the vicious revolvers, while hitching posts, doors, window frames, and storefronts were scored with bullets. Heywood lay on the bank floor, where he had fallen at the post of duty. Bunker was in the hands of the surgeons. All the bells of the town had been set ringing. People came hurrying to the scene from every direction. Excited preparations were making to pursue the escaping robbers.

  The scenes that followed showed that there were heroines as well as heroes in the community. While the first wild rumors of the affair were rife and it was believed that scores of marauders had invaded the town and that general pillage might be expected, ladies went to the public school and to the girls’ dormitory of Carleton College to give warning of the impending danger. One of the teachers in the public school was the wife of Mr. Bunker, the wounded teller. From different sources she received information first that he was wounded and then that he was killed. Crediting the least-alarming statement, she first made arrangements for the care of her pupils and then started to find her husband. Fortunately she met a friend with a carriage, who took her to the doctor’s office where Mr. Bunker was receiving surgical care. Mrs. Heywood’s first intimation of her husband’s death was received by accident and in a painfully abrupt manner. Being at her house on the west side of the river at a considerable distance from the scene of the tragedy, she chanced to hear one neighbor shout the news to another across the street. President Strong of Carleton College had already started at the request of friends to break the intelligence to her, when he learned that his errand was needless. The body was placed in a carriage and supported in the arms of President Strong, while it was driven to the Heywood residence. Mrs. Heywood showed herself worthy to be the wife of such a man. She bore the awful blow with the greatest calmness, and when she heard how he met his death, she said, “I would not have had him do otherwise.”

  The dead robbers received attentions of quite another sort. The two bodies were placed in an empty granary, where they remained during the night. The news of the raid had been telegraphed all over the country, and the evening trains brought crowds of curious people, eager to see and hear everything pertaining to the affair. The next day the number of visitors was so largely increased and the desire to see the dead bandits was so great that the bodies were brought out into the open square, which was soon packed with people. Among the visitors from other towns were sheriffs, police officers, and private citizens who had come to join in the pursuit of the escaped robbers.

  That afternoon the county coroner, Dr. Waugh of Faribault, held an inquest on the three bodies, and a verdict was found according to the facts: “That J. L. Heywood came to his death by a pistol shot fired by an unknown man who was attempting to rob the First National Bank of Northfield”; “That the two unknown men came to their death by the discharge of firearms in the hands of our citizen in self-defense and in protecting the property of the First National Bank of Northfield.”

  The grief and indignation over the death of Mr. Heywood were intense. He was a man greatly respected in the community, was prominent in church and business life, and at the time of his death was the city treasurer and also the treasurer of Carleton College. On Sunday, the 10th o
f September, two funeral services in honor of the murdered man were held in Northfield. In the morning came the public service in High School Hall, the largest auditorium in the city. The place was packed, notwithstanding the excessive rain and mud then prevailing. The introductory exercises were conducted by the Rev. Messrs. Gossard and Utter, the pastors of the Methodist and the Baptist churches, and the funeral address was delivered by the Rev. D. L. Leonard, pastor of the Congregational Church, the regular church services of the day being omitted. The admirable address of Mr. Leonard has been preserved in a neat pamphlet entitled, “Funeral Discourse on Joseph Lee Heywood,” published by Johnson and Smith, Minneapolis, and is a valuable contribution to the literature of this subject. As much of its biographical and historical matter is substantially covered by the present narrative, it need not be reproduced, but some extracts relating to Mr. Heywood’s personal character may properly be quoted, as showing the estimation in which he was held by one who not only knew him well but was voicing the sentiments of the community to which and for which he spoke.

  Mr. Heywood was, beyond most men, modest and timid. He shrank from the public gaze, and considering his high gifts and his standing in the community, he was retiring almost to a fault. He set a low estimate upon himself. He would not own to himself, did not even seem to know, that he was lovable and well-beloved. He courted no praise and sought no reward. Honors must come to him unsought if they came at all. He would be easily content to toil on, out of sight and with service unrecognized, but in every transaction he must be conscientious through and through and do each hour to the full the duties of the hour.