"For Wife & Kids"

In the old West train robbers embellished their felonies with quixotic gestures, fantastic flourishes. Last of the old school was Bill Carlisle who, after he had wrecked a train, would hold up the passengers with a candy-filled glass pistol. A train robbery in Wyoming last week showed how the old tradition has degenerated.

Near Cheyenne, the Union Pacific's Portland Limited struck a loosened rail, went careening into an embankment. Then the bandit appeared. He was a little fellow with a wizened face and pale blond hair. He wore the shabby blue overalls of a section hand.

The .38 automatic in his hand shook nervously as he asked the passengers to "fork over." "I've got a wife and two kids at home and the railroad won't give me a job," he apologized to his victims.

"Gimme your wallet damn quick." he swore feebly at Dr. Frederick James Kelly, president of the University of Idaho. Dr. Kelly handed over a billfold containing $74.

The bandit took no jewelry or other valuables. With a loot of no more than $800 he fled. He did not even look into the express car, where the dining car steward was hiding with $300 in cash. Out into the hills to catch the bandit "dead or alive" rode hundreds of searchers--sheriffs, deputies, policemen, railroad detectives, cowboys. Six suspects were rounded up, questioned, released. Then the hunt was abandoned.

At Pawnee. Okla., two officers arrested Tom Vernon, alias Tom Brennan. Deputy Sheriff Thomas J. Higgins of Los Angeles, who had stalked Vernon across six states, charged him with wrecking and robbing a Southern Pacific train near Saugus, Cal. last month. Sheriff Gus Romsa of Cheyenne was on hand to charge him also with last week's Wyoming job.

The California officer said that Vernon, onetime rodeo roughrider, horse thief, forger, had recently been released from Folsom Prison, Cal. He is unmarried, childless.

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