In the middle of July, 1899,

44-year-old Pinkerton agent Charlie Seringo stepped into James McParland's office and received his next assignment.

Seringo assumed he would have to infiltrate another mining union. McParland, Seringo's boss

in the Denver office of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, had been an undercover operative

in unions 20 years earlier. For the better part of a decade, the bulk of Seringo's cases involved

mining unions. Of all the cases Seringo had undertaken, probably the most dangerous had involved

infiltrating a union in the Idaho Panhandle. For 14 months, Seringo lived and worked with the miners

around Cordon. While he sympathized

with their plight, he believed their leaders were exploitative anarchists. During the case,

he was accused of being a traitor and was nearly lynched. That had been seven years ago.

And now, six months before the dawn of the new century, McParland had a big job

for Seringo, and it was not another mining case. Instead, Seringo learned he would need to

catch the men who recently robbed a train outside Wilcox, Wyoming.

In the early morning hours of June 2nd, the Overland Flyer No. 1, a Union Pacific train,

barreled west through a mighty storm. Around 2.15 a.m., the engineer looked outside and spotted

a red signal lantern waving in the distance. The engineer knew he was approaching a bridge, and he figured the signal was to let him know the bridge had been washed out.

He hit the brakes, but no sooner had the train come to a stop, then the engineer turned around and discovered he was staring down the barrel of a pistol.

A masked man was pointing a gun at his face, and out of the darkness, four more masked men appeared with rifles. They instructed the engineer to unhitch the locomotive and drive on to the bridge. The engineer complied, and the gang of five men moved to the mail car. They demanded that the men inside opened the door, but the men refused.

The robbers fired at the door, but the men inside refused to open.

So, the robbers placed dynamite against the door and blew it open.

In the mail car, the thieves found little that satisfied them, and they moved down to the express car.

They shouted for the man inside to open the door.

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