Guns of Outlaws by Gerry Souter

Author:Gerry Souter [Souter, Gerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2014-09-09T23:00:00+00:00

This Colt has been modified for fanning the hammer with the palm of the hand by filing off the front of the trigger guard and the trigger. Great speed, much noise, little accuracy. Rock Island Auction Company

His anger had completely obscured the bullet wound in his ankle that left a trail of blood oozing from his stirrup. Jennings, however, was a survivor and hooked up with his Spike-S Ranch outlaws for one last big score on which to retire—ninety thousand dollars carried by a Rock Island train. Following an elaborate plan, on October 1, 1897, the robbery was a success until they blew the safe in the express car. Jennings used two sticks of dynamite, but accidently left three more sticks lying on the express car floor. The resulting detonation blasted the car to flinders, but left the safe virtually intact. The blast alerted every marshal and vigilante within one hundred miles that the Jennings Gang was nearby.

After several close calls, the remnants of the gang made their way back to the Spike-S Ranch. On November 30, 1897, a final ambush caused the gang to scatter when Winchesters fired .30-30 steel jacket bullets backed with smokeless powder and .45-90 buffalo slugs. The gang escaped, but the countryside had turned against them, and they could no longer find safe houses or friendly havens. The marshals bagged Jennings a week later, and after two years of court appearances and legal battles staged by his brother, John, his sentence was reduced from life in prison to five years. He was freed on technicalities in 1902 and received a presidential pardon from Theodore Roosevelt in 1907.

In 1911, Jennings went straight into politics—the closest career he could find to his former work—and, in 1912, won the Democratic nomination for county attorney, but lost the 1914 election. While campaigning, he wrote his autobiography, Breaking Back with Will Irwin, which was turned into a silent film produced by Bill Tilghman in 1914, with Al Jennings playing himself for the cameras. His book writing also included a volume covering his relationship with a fellow felon and later Ohio State Penitentiary inmate, William Sidney Porter, a short story writer with a popular pen name. The book was Through the Shadows with O. Henry, published in 1921.

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