August 2017 20 By Robert Bill The westbound train out of Wilcox, Arizona Territory was easing through the desert, pulling hard and slow up a grade, when four masked men rode up even with the cab and boarded, forcing the engineer to stop the train. It was Jan. 30, 1985. The engineer and fireman were ordered to get down from the engine and walk off into the desert without looking back. In the express car, agent Mitchell knew what was going on. He had been held up near Maricopa a few months earlier. Mitchell grabbed the contents of the small safe and quietly slipped out of the car unseen into the desert night. When the four bandits got to the express car, they found it empty. Going to work on the main safe, they spent two hours carefully, very carefully, packing dynamite around the large, heavy steel monster. A Blast To Remember The bandits were cautious because they knew little about dynamite. They did know they needed something heavy to pack down the charge with, to get maximum effect. They found $80,000 in silver Mexican pesos stashed elsewhere in the express car which was ideal. Delighted with themselves, and the massive amount of dynamite placed around the safe, they lit the fuse and ran. The blast was a mighty one, far larger than needed to open the safe, which it did. It also totally disintegrated the express car and sent Mexican pesos shooting through the desert night like rockets, some of them soaring more than a quarter mile before hitting ground. Later, Mexican pesos were found salted in telegraph poles along the rack as if they had been fired from a shot gun. The hapless bandits rode off into the night with $1,800 in paper money. Oh well. The $80,000 in Mexican pesos would have been too heavy to ride off with anyway. They didn’t have the foresight the Daltons did when they brought a spring wagon along on that Texas train robbery. 1890s OUTLAW FOUND Law & Death Bill Traynor was not among of the better known outlaws of Arizona Territory in the 1890s, but he ran with those who were. From his early days as a hired gun in Texas, where he hired his gun out to cattlemen warring against nesters, he leaned toward running and funning with outlaws who had widespread fame. When the Dalton gang robbed a train in Texas and carried the express car safe off in a spring wagon, it was reported Bill Traynor was the wagon driver. Not long after news of that successful caper spread, Traynor slipped across New Mexico and into Arizona Territory. Investigators soon learned that there were several cowboys who were missing from area ranches and soon pieced together the names of the four suspects. They were Grant Wheeler, David Sizer, alias Joe George, Jeff Yates, alias Dick Davis and Bill Traynor. Ten days later, the gang was spotted in the Huachuca Mountains. A few days after that, in the Chiricahuas. Wanted The wanted posters sent out on the four described Bill Traynor as 35 years old, 5 ft. 7 in. tall, with handsome, regular features and a slightly Roman nose. They warned he was “one of the best pistol shots in Arizona Territory.” Authorities thought the outlaws might have split up. Then, on Feb. 25 in Stein’s pass on the Arizona-New Mexico border, two robbers stopped another Southern Pacific train. This time they uncoupled the engine from the rest of the train and ran it up the track, leaving the express car far behind with the rest of the cars. Oops! The two outlaws rode away empty handed. Billy Breckenridge, one of the Territory’s best known lawmen, was the S-P detective who investigated. He concluded the outlaws at Stein’s pass were not part of the gang that held up the train at Wilcox and were, indeed, “very green hands.” The four who pulled the Wilcox robbery had split up. Payroll Guard In Mexico Bill Traynor had headed into old Mexico. So had Dick Davis. Joe George and Grant Wheeler were seen now and then cowboying around Southern Arizona Territory ranches. Eventually Breckenridge tracked Wheeler down near Mancos, Colorado. Wheeler shot himself rather than let himself be captured by Breckenridge. Henry Newton Brown Gang, 1884