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The above reward will be paid by the Great Northern Express company for the arrest and detention of Harry Lounghbo, who in company with others held up and robbed the west bound train on the Great Northern Railway, near Malta, Montana, on the morning of November 29th, 1892.

Description – Height, 5 feet 11 inches. Dark complexion, short dark moustache, dark hair. Age, about 25 years. Slender and erect, with slight stoop in head and shoulders. Short upper lip, exposing teeth when talking. Teeth white and clean with small dark spot on upper front tooth to right of center. Wore a medium size black soft hat. Dark double breasted sack coat. Dark close-fitting pants with blue overalls. When last seen was riding bay horse branded Half Circle Cross on left shoulder.

Address communications to
B.F. O’Neal, Sheriff
Choteau County, Mont.

Madden and Bass were both convicted of “Burglary in the Night Time” in connection with the Malta train robbery and on Christmas morning 1892 entered the Deer Lodge State Penitentiary. Prison records indicate that Bass received a pardon and early release on January 1, 1897; he then disappeared from all record. Madden was released January 19, 1898, with time off for good behavior. According to the Pinkerton Detective Agency Archives, Madden moved to Oregon City, Ore. The Pinkertons kept him under surveillance, opened a dossier on him and gave him the cipher name “Wolf” in their reports. When the Southern Pacific Railroad was robbed at nearby Walkers, Ore., Madden was immediately suspected; however, nothing could be proved.

“Lounghbo” – Harry Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid – was never recaptured or tried for the Malta train robbery. For a while, he worked on the N Bar N Ranch near Culbertson, Mont. According to employee lists, one of his co-workers was Harvey Logan, a local rancher and rustler also known as Kid Curry. Both Sundance and Harvey would soon be members of the Wild Bunch, which was led by Butch Cassidy.

Soon after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid sailed from New York for Buenos Aires in 1901, Harvey Logan rode north from Texas with Ben Kilpatrick, alias the Tall Texan. Logan and his clan had owned a horse ranch in Landusky, Mont., and it now provided a safe hideout, especially needed since Texas authorities suspected Logan of murder. Logan’s friends Jim Thornhill and Bob Coburn always made sure that Logan’s Rock Creek Ranch was well stocked for him.

In early June, 1901, Logan and the Tall Texan met up with Orland Camillo “Deaf Charley” Hanks, who had been released from the Deer Lodge Penitentiary on May 30, 1901, after serving about 6 ½ years for robbing a Northern Pacific train near Reed Point, Mont. While at Deer Lodge, two of Hanks’ fellow inmates had been Harry Bass and Bill Madden, both serving time for the first Malta holdup. Apparently short on cash, Logan, Kilpatrick and Hanks decided to hold up another train in the Malta area.

On Wednesday, July 3, 1901, the westbound Great Northern Railroad Coast Flyer No. 3 made its regular stop in Malta about 1:30 p.m. Kilpatrick purchased a ticket and boarded the train as a passenger. As the train began to pull out of town, the conductor noticed Logan loitering on the platform near the baggage car, where he was trying to sneak aboard the tender car. Before the conductor could kick him off the train, however, Logan had already crawled over the tender and onto the engine cab. By the time the conductor pulled the emergency stop cord, Logan already had his gun leveled on engineer Thomas Jones and fireman Mike O’Neill.

Logan gave the order to keep the train moving until they reached the Exeter Creek Bridge, just east of Wagner, a small whistle stop a few miles west of Malta. When the train did not come to an immediate halt when the emergency cord was pulled, the suspicious conductor raced through the passenger cars toward the engine cab. He spotted Sheriff Griffith of Great Falls, Mont., and the brakeman along the way and enlisted their help. However, Kilpatrick, riding in the passenger car, noticed the three men heading forward with their guns drawn, and he fired a couple of warning shots at them. Woodside was hit in the shoulder, and everyone backed away from the obvious danger. Woodside later had to have his arm amputated.

The train halted at the bridge where Deaf Charley Hanks was waiting with escape horses and dynamite. Logan and Kilpatrick fired their guns along the passenger cars to keep curious heads inside; their gunfire ricocheted and slightly injured a teenaged girl and A.W. Douglas, an auditor with the railroad. Logan then ordered engineer Jones to disconnect the baggage and express cars from the passenger cars and to pull forward again. He commanded mail clerk Jimmy Martin and express messenger C.H. Smith to open the express car doors and jump out, which they immediately did.

Although it took three attempts, they blew the safe open and reportedly took “eight hundred sheets with four notes on each being three ten-dollar and one twenty-dollar bills” in unsigned bank notes belonging to the National Bank of Montana. They also took a similar package containing $500 for the American National Bank, Helena, a bolt of green silk fabric, a package of watches and a bag filled with silver coins. As they loaded the loot onto their horses, express messenger Smith asked Logan for a souvenir of the holdup. Logan fired off the remaining rounds in his pistol, handed it to Smith and said, “Thanks for your help.”

As the trio started to leave, a local sheepherder named John Cunningham came upon the scene and realized what was happening. He began to race towards Malta to sound the alarm when the Kilpatrick and Hanks spotted him. They fired their guns to stop him, but only succeeded in nicking his horse slightly on the hip. Cunningham reached Malta on his injured horse, spread the news of the robbery and joined a posse that soon left for the holdup site.

Meanwhile, Logan led the gang southwest through the Missouri Breaks on a pre-planned escape route through Bob Coburn’s Circle C Ranch. He spotted Bob’s 14-year-old brother Walt out on a knoll and slowly rode over alone. Kid Curry said, “Jimmer [Thornhill] says you know how to keep your mouth shut….Our horses are played out….We’re travelin’ light and borrowin’ the loan of some Circle C horses….If a two-bit sheriff and his posse show up at the ranch, remember you never saw me.” The outlaws then made a clean escape.

Although this second holdup, the Wagner train robbery, had succeeded far beyond the 1892 take of Sundance and his pals, Logan, Hanks and Kilpatrick risked laundering the stolen money too quickly. The easily identified bills were traced as the men took chances cashing in the forged bank notes. Kilpatrick was arrested in St. Louis on November 5, 1901; he was sentenced to prison for forging signatures on the stolen bank notes. After serving nearly 10 years, the Tall Texan was killed during an attempted train robbery in Sanderson, Texas, on March 13, 1912. Hanks was shot and killed by detectives while on a drunken spree at Flo Williams’ whorehouse in San Antonio, Texas, on April 17, 1902. Deaf Charley still had stolen money sewn into his pockets.

Harvey Logan was tracked down outside Knoxville, Tenn., where he was captured on December 15, 1902. After receiving a 20-year hard labor sentence for the robbery, he escaped jail in June 1903, but did not elude the law for long. A year later he was tracked down by a posse outside Parachute, Colo., after trying to rob another train and is believed to have committed suicide in the massive shootout that followed.

Malta today is still in cattle country, and the train still rumbles through town on a regular basis, although it is now part of the Burlington Northern Railroad. The bright green cars travel past the robbery sites where one Kid pocketed a pittance and slipped away and another Kid grabbed a fistful of dollars that he never got the chance to spend. ww

Donna B. Ernst, who lives with her husband, Paul, in Pennsylvania, is a frequent contributor to Wild West magazine and has written five books. This article is adapted from Ernst’s latest book (due for release early in 2009) The Sundance Kid: A Family Biography, which expands on her previous work on the Sundance Kid and includes many new finds. Also suggested for further reading: The Train Robbery Era: An Encyclopedic History, by Richard Patterson.

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