DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and friend, it is a good one. We're out in Terrell County, west Texas, where the land is big and the railroad cuts through like a dare — and on the morning of March 13, 1912, two men decided to take that dare all the way to its ugly end. In the early hours of that day, Ben Kilpatrick — a former sidekick of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, no less — and a man named Ole Hobek boarded the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio railroad train when it stopped at Dryden, bound for El Paso.
Now, you'd think a man running in those kinds of circles might've learned something about the long odds of this line of work. But here they were. They ordered the engineer on to Baxter's Curve — a sharp bend in the railway's rail bed — and the baggage cars were uncoupled from the coaches.
So far, so good for the robbers. Or so they thought. Because while Kilpatrick and Hobek were searching for valuables, a Wells Fargo express manager named David A.
Trousdale was quietly sizing up the situation. Trousdale bludgeoned one of the robbers with an ice mallet, and then — here's where the story turns on a pin — killed the other with the first robber's own rifle. Two men came to rob that train.
Neither one left it alive. Kilpatrick and Hobek were buried in Sanderson. David A.
Trousdale was recognized and rewarded for his bravery. One of the last major train robberies in west Texas, and it was stopped not by a lawman, not by a posse, but by one man with an ice mallet and a clear head in the dark. West Texas has a way of producing exactly that kind of person.
What the marker says
In the early hours of March 13, 1912, Ben Kilpatrick, a former sidekick of Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid, and Ole Hobek attempted one of the last major train robberies in west Texas. The two robbers boarded the Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio railroad train when it stopped at Dryden on the way to El Paso. They ordered the engineer on to Baxter's Curve, a sharp bend in the railway's rail bed. The baggage cars were uncoupled from the coaches, but while the two searched for valuables, Wells Fargo express manager David A. Trousdale bludgeoned one with an ice mallet and killed the other with the first robber's rifle. Kilpatrick and Hobek were buried in Sanderson, and Trousdale was recognized and rewarded for his bravery.