derings of what is commonly called "the great K.& A. train
robbery,"--some so twisted and distorted that but for the intermediate
versions I should never have recognized them as attempts to narrate
the series of events in which I played a somewhat prominent part. I
have read or been told that, unassisted, the pseudo-hero captured a
dozen desperadoes; that he was one of the road agents himself; that he
was saved from lynching only by the timely arrival of cavalry; that
the action of the United States government in rescuing him from the
civil authorities was a most high-handed interference with State
rights; that he received his reward from a grateful railroad by being
promoted; that a lovely woman as recompense for his villainy--but
bother! it's my business to tell what really occurred, and not what
the world chooses to invent. And if any man thinks he would have done
otherwise in my position, I can only say that he is a better or a
worse man than Dick Gordon.

Primarily, it was football which shaped my end. Owing to my skill in
the game, I took a post-graduate at the Sheffield Scientific School,
that the team might have my services for an extra two years. That led
to my knowing a little about mechanical engineering, and when I felt
the "quad" for good I went into the Alton Railroad shops. It wasn't
long before I was foreman of a section; next I became a division
superintendent, and after I had stuck to that for a time I was
appointed superintendent of the Kansas & Arizona Railroad, a line
extending from Trinidad in Kansas to The Needles in Arizona, tapping
the Missouri Western System at the first place, and the Great Southern
at the other. With both lines we had important traffic agreements,
as well as the closest relations, which sometimes were a little
difficult, as the two roads were anything but friendly, and we had
directors of each on the K. & A. board, in which they fought like
cats. Indeed, it could only be a question of time when one would
oust the other and then absorb my road. My headquarters were at
Albuquerque, in New Mexico, and it was there, in October, 1890, that
I received the communication which was the beginning of all that
followed.

This initial factor was a letter from the president of the Missouri
Western, telling me that their first vice-president, Mr. Cullen (who
was also a director of my road), was coming out to attend the annual
election of the K. & A., which under our charter had to be held