In June following both the James Boys were seen in Kansas City by intimate acquaintances, and the night of June 27th was spent by both the bandits with their mother at the Samuels' residence. On the 15th of July, Bob, Jim and Cole Younger, Jesse and Frank James, Bud Singleton and two other bandits, whose names have never been learned by the authorities, left Clay county, Missouri, and rode northward to a spot which had been selected by Frank James and Jim Younger, on the line of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, about five miles east of Council Bluffs. The reason for selecting this place and time was because of information received of an intended shipment of a large amount of gold from San Francisco to New York, which would be made over this route, reaching Omaha about the 19th of July. How this information was imparted was never ascertained, but its truth has led to the belief that the James Boys had confederates on the Pacific slope with whom they were in constant communication.
 
On the evening of July 21st a formidable band of eight of the most desperate men that ever committed a crime, took position in a dense thicket beside a deep cut in the railroad. They hitched their horses out of view of passengers on the train and then, after a few minutes' work, displaced one of the rails. This[Pg 61] accomplished, they waited the coming of the express train which was due at that point at 8:30 P. M. From a knoll near the rendezvous Jesse James descried the blazing headlight of the coming train, and then made everything ready for their villainous work. A sharp curve in the track prevented the engineer from discovering anything wrong, until it was impossible to prevent the disaster which the banditti had prepared for. The screaming engine came thundering like an infuriated mammoth, which a reversal of the lever only began to check when it struck the loosened rail and plunged sideways into the bank, while the cars telescoped and piled up in terrible confusion. The engineer was instantly kille............