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The Symbolic Foundations of Conditioned Behavior
Distinguished Lecture Series 1st Edition Charles R.
Gallistel Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Charles R. Gallistel, John Gibbon
ISBN(s): 9780805829341, 0805829342
Edition: 1st
File Details: PDF, 20.29 MB
Year: 2002
Language: english
 The Symbolic Foundations
of Conditioned Behavior

CHARLES R. GALLISTEL
Rutgers University

JOHN GIBBON
New York State Psychiatric Institute and
Columbia University

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

London Jersey 2002
New Mahwah,
Copyright @ 2002 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in

any form, by photostat. microform, retrieval system, or any other
means, without the prior written permissionof the publisher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Inc., Publishers

10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430

Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey

0-8058-2934-2

Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper,

and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.
Printed in the United States of America
1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Preface V
Series Preface ix

introduction 1

ResponseTiming 5
The Peak Procedure 9
Scalar Expectancy Theory 11
The FI Scallop 14
The Timing of Aversive CRs 15
Timing the CS: Discrimination 20
Summary22

Acquisition 23
Quantitative Results 26
Rate Estimation Theory 36
Generalizing the Model 46

Cue
Competition
and
inhibitory
Conditioning 57
Experimental Results 57
Two Principles 61
General Solution to the Rate Estimation Problem 62
Intuitive “Derivations” 65
Conclusions 78

iii
iv CONTENTS

4 Extinction 80
Model of Simple Extinction 83
Generalizing the Model 86

5 Backward,
Secondary,
and
Trace
Conditioning 10 7
Delay Conditioning Versus Trace Conditioning 108
Forward Versus Backward Conditioning 109
Secondary Versus Primary Conditioning 111

6 Operant
Choice 124
Opting Versus Allocating 125
Hyperbolic Discounting and Self-Control 141
Harmonic Averaging andthe Preference
for Variabillty 143
The Equivalence of Delayed Rewards
and Probabilistic Rewards 148
lime-Scale Invariance in Free Operant Avoidance 151
Summary153

7 The
Challenge
for
Associative
Theory 156
Different Answers to Basic Questions 156
Contrasting Basic Assumptions 159
The Challenges Posed by Experimental Findings 163
Summary176

References 178

AuthorIndex 189

Subject
Index 193
 Preface

As this book goes to press, there is an ongoing discussion on the Animal Learning
and Behavior List Server about the decline of behaviorism in psychology and the
rise of cognitivism. Most of the participants in the discussion do research and
teaching in animal learning. Most of them remain to varying degrees behaviorists.
They are, by and large, uncomfortable with cognitive theorizing and unhappy
about the decline of behaviorism. In this book, we hope to persuade students of
animal learning that cognitive theorizing is essential for an understanding of the
phenomena revealed by conditioning experiments.We hope also to persuade the
cognitive psychology community that conditioning phenomena offer such a strong
empirical foundation for a rigorous brand of cognitive psychology that the study
of animal learning should reclaim a more central place in the fieldof psychology.
There is, we believe, no way to achieve a coherent uilderstandingof animal
conditioning phenomena without recognizing that computational processingof
information-bearing sensory signals constructs a symbolic representation of
selected aspects of the animal’s experience, which is stored in memory and
subsequently retrieved for use in the decision processes that determine the behavior
we observe. These essentially cognitive notions-information processing,
computation, symbolic representation, memory storage, retrieval from memory,
and decision processes-are in no sense merely metaphors. They are what the
brain is doing to produce the behavior we observe. We cannot understand the
phenomena revealed by conditioning experiments without understanding the
structure of the underlying information-processing operations in the brain, any
more than we can understand the phenomena of chemistry without understanding
the structure of the underlying atoms.
We believe our analysis of the work we review also merits the attention of
the cognitive science and philosophy communities because it speaks directly to a
central question that separates many forms of connectionist modeling from the
artificial intelligence(AI) approach to the mind. This is also a question that figures
prominently in the philosophy of mind, particularly those aspects of the philosophy
of mind that have been influenced by connectionist modeling and by
neurobiological considerations, that is,by the argument that the explanation for
how the mind works is to be sought in our current understanding of how the brain
works. Here the question is whether learning is primarily a matter of learning
that or primarily a matter of learning to.
In traditional AI and traditional philosophy of mind, computers and minds
learn that something is true about the world. That is, they acquire beliefs. What
they then do follows from what they believe together with the computer’s goals

V
vi PREFACE

or the mind’s intentions. Connectionist modeling-and the philosophy of mind

allied to it-rejects this account in favor ofan account in which symbolic
representation of properties of the world (beliefs) play no role. Learning in
connectionist computers (and in the brains imaginedby philosophers who base
their arguments of presumptions about how the brain works) is assumed to be a
matter of learning to do something-that is, to respond in a certainway to certain
inputs-by means of a rewiring process. The rewiring is drivenbyeither feedback
from the consequences of previous actions (back propagation) or by statistical
patterns of co-occurrence in the inputs (Hebbian or unsupervised learning
mechanisms).
It is often taken for granted by both schools of thought that animals in
conditioning experiments are learning to respond rather than learning that certain
things are true about the environment in which they find themselves during the
experiment. The question is often taken to be whether anything other than the
learning to that we supposedly see in animal conditioning experiments is required
to explain human learning. Our argument is that the behavior we see in conditio
experiments is the consequence of learning that certain things are true, rather than
learning to respondin certain ways.In other words, the symbol processing nature
of mental and neural activity is evident in simple conditioning, where the behavio
that emerges must be seen as driven by what the animal has come to believe is
true. The rabbit blinksin response to a conditioned tone, because it has come to
believe that a shock to the orbit follows the tone at a half-second latency with
great regularity.
One might suppose, therefore, that we are at risk of “leaving the rat lost in
thought” as Guthrie is said to have remarked about Tolman’s account of spatial
learning. On the contrary, however, our models are built around decision processes,
which are formally specified models of how what the animal knows gets translat
into whatit does. Our models are explicit about how what has been learned becom
manifest in what is done, whereas associative models (learning to models) are
famously vague on this very point-how the rewiring caused by experience gets
translated into observable behavior.
We believe that our arguments also merit the attention of the neurobiological
community. What onelooks for in the nervous system is strongly determined by
what a behaviorally based conceptual scheme leads one to to expect
find there.If
you think that talk about the memory for a variable like the duration of an inte
or the magnitude of a reward, or the distance between two landmarks is just a
metaphor, then you are not going to waste your time looking for its neurobiolog
realization, any more than the many biochemists who thought genes were just
metaphors wasted their time looking for the molecular realization of the gene.
Neuroscientists interested in the neurobiology of learning and memory are
not, for the most part, looking for the mechanisms of information processing.
Rather they are looking for associative bonds in the nervous system, that is, changes
PREFACE vii

in synaptic conductance produced by the temporal pairing of synaptic signals.

This is evidentin the following quotation from the abstract of an articlein Nature,
which attracted widespread attention from the press (e.g., Wade, 1999), as a
possible neuroscience breakthrough:

Hebb’s rule (1949) statesthat learning and memory are based on modifications
of synaptic strength among neurons that are simultaneously active. This implies
that enhanced synaptic coincidence detection would lead to better learning and
memory. If the NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor, a synaptic coincidence
detector, acts as
a graded switchfor memory formation, enhanced signal detection
by NMDA receptors, should enhance learning and memory. . . . (Tang et al.,
1999, p. 63)

There is, we argue, little empirical foundation for the claim that coincidence
detection on a time scale of a few hundred milliseconds plays any role in learning
or memory, at least notin the learning and memory processes that mediate basic
conditioning. Aswe show at some length, the behavioral data indicate that what
matters in conditioning are the relative durations of the intervalsin the protocol,
not their absolute durations. The importance of relative durations as opposed to
absolute durations is central to our suggestion that conditioning processes are
time-scale invariant.
We argue that what neuroscientists ought to be looking for are not mechanisms
of synaptic plasticity activated bynarrowtemporal coincidences but rather
mechanisms by which variables may be stored and retrieved. Mechanisms for the
storage and retrieval of variables, together with mechanisms for doing
computations with those variables, are the heart and soul of a conventional
computer, so there can be no question about the physical realizability of such
mechanisms. How they are realized i n neural tissue is anothermatter.
Neuroscientists will not get an answer to this profoundly important question until
they begin to actively look for the mechanisms of information processing.
This book is based closely on a paper in the Psychological Review entitled
“Time, Rate, and Conditioning” (Gallistel& Gibbon, 2000). Most of the figures
and much of the text first appeared there. That paper was being written at the time
one of us (CRG) was asked to give the MacEachran Lectures at the University of
Alberta. The lectures, of which this book is a product, were given October6-8,
1997. CRG is grateful to our colleagues at the University of Alberta for the
opportunity they provided to put this material in lecture and book form and for
the many fruitful discussions during his visit. He is also grateful for their patience
with the long delay in publication. We are both indebted to many colleagues for
critical readings of parts or all of what appears here. Wewish particularly to
thank Ralph Miller for detailed and meticulous critical readings of the
Psychological Review manuscript.
viii PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge support from the following grants during the period
when these works were being written: SBR-9720410, entitled “Learning and
Intelligent Systems: Learning in Complex Environments by Natural and Artificial
Systems,” from the National Science Foundation (Roche1 Gelman, Orville
Chapman, Charles R. Gallistel, Edward P. Stabler, Charles E. Taylor, Phillip J.
Kellman, John R. Merriam, James W. Stigler, and Joseph A. Wise, CoPIs) and
MH14649 from the National Institutes of Health to John Gibbon.
During the copyediting process, John Gibbon died. He was a scientist of the
first rank, both
as a theorist, andas an experimentalist. He pioneered the application
of the information-processing framework to the analysis of timing behavior. He
will be sorely missed by the field, to which he contributedso much. To those who
knew him as a friend and collaborator, his loss is beyond the power of words to
express.

“ c . R. Gallistel
 John M. MacEachran
Memorial Lecture Series

TheDepartmentofPsychologyattheUniversityofAlbertainauguratedthe
MacEachranMemorialLectureSeriesin1975inhonor of thelateJohn M.
MacEachran.ProfessorMacEachranwasborninOntarioin1877.In 1906 he
received a PhD in Philosophy from Queen’s University in 1905. In 1906 he left
for Germany to begin more formal study in psychology, first spending just less
thanayearinBerlinwithStumpf,andthenmoving to Leipzig, where he
completedasecondPhDin1908withWundtashissupervisor.Duringthis
period he also spent timein Paris studying under Durkheim and Henri Bergson.
With these impressive qualifications the University of Alberta was particularly
fortunate in attracting him to its faculty in 1909.
ProfessorMacEachran’simpacthasbeensignificantattheuniversity,
provincial, and national levels. At the University of Alberta he offered the first
courses in psychologyandsubsequently served as Head oftheDepartmentof
Philosophy and Psychology and Provost of the University until his retirementin
1945. It was largely owing to his activities and example that several areas of
academicstudywereestablishedonafirmandenduringbasis.Inaddition to
playing a major role in establishing the Faculties of Medicine, Education, and
Law in theProvince,ProfessorMacEachranwasalsoinstrumental in the
formative stages of the Mental Health Movement in Alberta. At a national level,
he was one of the founders of the Canadian Psychological Association and also
became itsfirstHonoraryPresident in 1939.JohnM.MacEachranwas indeed
one of the pioneers in the development of psychologyin Canada.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of theMacEachranMemorialLecture
Series has been the continuing agreement that the Department of Psychology at
the University ofAlbertahaswithLawrenceErlbaumAssociates,Publishers,
Inc., for the publication of each lecture series. The following is a list of the
Invited Speakers and the titles of their published lectures:

ix
X SERIES PREFACE

1975 Frank, A. Geldard (Princeton University)

Sensory Saltation: Metastability in the Perceptual World

1976 Benton J. Underwood (Northwestern University)

Temporal Codes for Memories: Issues and Problems

1977 David Elkind (Rochester University)

The Child’s Reality: Three Developmental Themes

1978 Harold Kelly (University of California, Los Angeles)

Personal Relationships: Their Structures and processes

1979 Robert Rescorla (Yale University)

Pavlovian Second-Order Conditioning: Studies in Associative Learning

1980 Mortimer Mishkin (NIMH-Bethesda)

Cognitive Circuits (unpublished)

1981 James Greeno (University of Pittsburgh)

Current Cognitive Theory in Problem Solving (Unpublished)

1982 William Uttal (University of Michigan)

Visual Form Detection in 3-Dimensional Space

1983 Jean Mandler (University of California, San Diego)

Stories, Scripts, and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory

1984 George Collier and Carolyn Rovee-Collier (Rutgers University

Learning and Motivation: Function and Mechanisms (unpublished)

1985 Alice Eagly (Purdue University)

Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social-Role Interpretation

1986 Karl Pribram (Stanford University)

Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing

1987 Abram Amsel (University of Texas at Austin)

Behaviorism, Neobehaviorism, and Cognitivism in Learning Theory:
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

1988 Robert S . Siegler and Eric Jenkins (Camegie Mellon University)

How Children Discover New Strategies
SERIES PREFACE xi
1989 Robert Efron (University of California, Martinez)
The Decline and Fall of Hemispheric Specialization

1999 Philip N. Johnson-Laird (Princeton University)

Human and Machine Thinking

1991 Timothy A. Salthouse (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Mechanisms of Age-Cognition Relations in Adulthood

I992 Scott Paris (University of Michigan)

Authentic Assessment of Children’s Literacy and Learning

1993 Bryan Kolb (University of Lethbridge)

Brain Plasticity and Behavior

1994 Max Coltheart (Maquarie University)

Our Mental Lexicon: Empirical Evidence of the Modularity of Mind
(unpublished)

1995 Norbert Schwarz (University of Michigan)

Cognition and Communication: Judgmental Biases, Research Methods,
and the Logic of Conversation

1996 Gilbert Gottlieb (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Synthesizing Nature-Nurture: Prenatal Roots of Instinctive Behavior

1997 Charles R. Gallistel (Rutgers University) and John Gibbon (New York
State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University)
The Symbolic Foundations of Conditioned Behavior

Eugene C. Lechelt, Coordinator

M a c h c h r a n Memorial Lecture Series

Sponsored by theDepartment of Psychology,TheUniversity of Alberta,in

memory of John M. MacEachran, pioneer in Canadian psychology.
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
 Introduction

In this book, we present anew conceptual framework for the understanding

of the learning that occurs in the Pavlovian and operant conditioning para-
digms. Many of the experiments whose results we seek to explain are famil-
iar to anyone who has taken a course in basic learning, and even to most
students who have had only an introductory course in experimental psy-
chology. We show that many of the best known results from the vast condi-
tioning literature-particularly the quantitative results-can be more readily
explained if one starts from the assumption that what happens in the
course of conditioning is not the formation of associations but rather the
learning of the temporal intervals in the experimental protocol. What ani-
mals acquire are not associations, but symbolic knowledge of quantifiable
properties of their experience. In the final chapter, we argue that this con-
clusion has broad implications for cognitive science, for neurobiology, and
for all those disciplines concerned with the nature of mind.
Conditioning paradigms were created to test and elaborate associative
conceptions of the learning process. In these paradigms, the subject is pre-
sented with simple, unstructured, or very simply structured stimuli-tones,
lights, noises, clickers, buzzers-whose temporal relations to each other
and to one ormore reinforcing stimuli are manipulated. The best known ex-
ample comes from the work of Pavlov (1928), who repeatedly sounded a
tone or noise, followed by the presentation of food to hungry dogs. He ob-
served that in time the dogs salivated in response to the tone or noise. He
originated the study of what is now called Pavlovian conditioning, and he
was such an astute observer and recorder of the phenomena to be o b
2 INTRODUCTION

served when animals are being conditioned that students ofanimal learning
continue even now to read his lectures with profit.
Stimuli like food, water, puffs of air delivered to the sclera, or mildly
painful shocks to the feet-stimuli that reliably motivate observable behav-
ior-are called reinforcers.The terminology reflects the conceptual frame-
work that Pavlov and almost all students of conditioning after him have a p
plied to the understanding of this phenomenon. Pavlov thought that the
food strengthened(reinforced) a connection between elements in the nerv-
ous system.The connection served as a conducting pathway over which ex-
citation propagated from the tone-sensitive elements to the food-sensitive
elements. The development of this pathway-the conditioned reflex path-
way-explained how it was that the tone came in time to elicit a response
similar to the responseelicited by the food itself.This conception of the un-
derlying process-that it involves the strengthening of a connection-still
dominates thinking about basic learning.
Pavlov also called reinforcers unconditioned stimuli (USs). We will use
the terms reinforcer and US more or less interchangeably. Following Pav-
lov, we will call the originally neutral stimuli (the tones, lights, etc.) condi-
tioned stimuli (CSs for short) and the responses that develop to them con-
ditioned responses (CRs).
Clearly, Pavlov’saccount of learning that occurs during conditioning is a
“learning to” account; the dog learns to salivate, rather than learning that
the tone predicts food. In associative models of the conditioning process,
symbolic knowledge of the world is not acquired. The altered conductive
connections (the associations) may mediate an adaptive response-for ex-
ample, a blink that shields the eye from an impending puffof air-but they
do not encode what it is about the experienced world that makes an appro-
priately timed blink adaptive. The connection forged by repeated experi-
ence of a tone and an air puff ora tone and food does not encode the tem-
poral relation between CS and the US.
In contemporary discussions of associative conditioning, properties of
the stimuli used are commonly assumed to be encoded in stimulus traces
left behind in the nervous system by the transient activity that the CSs and
USs evoke (Balleine, Garner, Ganzalez, & Dickinson, 1995; Bouton, 1993;
Colwill & Rescorla, 1990; Dickinson, 1989; Dickinson & Balleine, 1994;Res-
coria, 1991, 1993;Rescorla & Colwill, 1989).However, associative theories do
not specify the principles governing stimulus encoding, so it is a moot ques-
tion whether stimulus properties (e.g., amount, intensity, color, flavor, size,
duration, tonal composition) may themselves be represented by associa-
tive strengths, and, if so, how. In associative theories, as currently elabo-
rated, the strengthof the associative bond does not specify any objectively
describable property of the CS, the US, or the relation between them. That
is why the associations produced by conditioning do not have symbolic
INTRODUCTION 3

content. Their strengths do not specify objective facts about the animal’s
conditioning experience.
The subjects in conditioning experiments do, however, learn the tempo-
ral intervals in the protocols. This conclusion, once controversial, is now
widely accepted, on the basis of the kinds of experimental evidence re-
viewed at length in the chapters that follow. This temporal learning has
been modeled quantitatively by so-called timing models (Church, Broad-
bent, & Gibbon, 1992; Gibbon, 1977,1992; Gibbon, Church, & Meck,1984;
Killeen & Fetterman, 1988).
The ability of timing models to explain the timing of conditioned re-
sponses is widely recognized. It is not widely appreciated, however, how
fundamentally the discovery of an interval timing capacity may alter our
conception of the conditioning process itself. Timingmodels give us models
of conditioning in which symbolic knowledge is the foundation of the o b
served behavior. They are models of how this knowledge is acquired and
used. In this new conceptual framework, almost every aspect of basic con-
ditioning appears in a different light. Our purpose in this book is to make
clear salient features of that conceptual framework.
One feature of this conceptual framework is that the learning mecha-
nisms that mediate conditioned behavior should not be thought of as basic
to higher learning of all kinds. What is primarily manipulated in the great
majority of experiments commonly discussed under the heading of classi-
cal or operant conditioning is the temporal relations among stimuli. The
models we discuss are specific to this kind of learning. Our models operate
in the domain of nonstationary multivariate time series analysis. They do
not purport to be general theories of learning. On the contrary, they are
predicated on the assumption that there can be no such thing as a general
theory of learning, because learning mechanisms, like other biological
mechanisms,have problem-specific structures (Gallistel, 1992b, 1999b).
Mechanisms with problem-specificstructure aremore or less inherentin an
information processing approach to thebrain, becausedifferent kinds of in-
formation must be processed in different ways.
Within the account we propose, there is no important distinction-at the
level of process-between instrumentaland classical conditioning. The
learning that occurs in both kinds of protocols depends on mechanisms
for learning temporal intervals and rates and using those intervals and
rates tomeasure contingency. On the other hand,in our framework,the ac-
quisition of a conditioned response, the extinction of that response and the
timing of the response are distinct problems, requiring distinct decisions
for their solution.
In our view, different learning mechanisms may make use of a common
set of elementary neurocomputational operations, such as the storageand
retrieval of the values of variables (distances, intervals, intensities, etc.),
4 INTRODUCTION

and the adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and ordering of these

variables. However, at the level of the learning processes themselves, the
processes that compute and utilize symbolic representations of the condi-
tioning experience, different problems necessitate different computations.
Thus, learning is inherently modular in this framework, and thebasis of the
modularity is computational: Different representations must be computed
in different ways.
A modularity of processing rooted in differing computational require-
ments is an unusual assumption within the studyof learning, but it is the or-
dinary assumption within sensory psychophysics. There, different deci-
sions that the subject makes about the properties of a stimulus-whether it
is red or green, moving to theleft or moving to theright, and so on-depend
on different decision variables, which are assumed to be computed in dif-
ferent cortical modules. The modularity of stimulus processing is taken for
granted in contemporary sensory psychophysics. Our models make the
same modularity assumption for the stimulus processing that mediates
conditioned behavior.
Our focus is on the quantitative facts. This, too, is unusual. Most learning
models have been content to predict only the direction of the effects of var-
ious manipulations, not the magnitude of the effects.
In the final chapter, we discuss the radical challenge that this new infor-
mation processing, cognitive framework poses for the traditional associa-
tive framework. This challenge should be of broad interest to contempe
rary psychologists because it is one of the few areas in experimental
psychology where the associative framework and the information process-
ing framework meet head on, offering alternative ways of thinking about an
extensive body of experimentally established facts. One canthen ask,
which wayof thinking about these facts gives a clearer morerigorously for-
mulated and more broadly applicable account? And why? What is it about
one framework that makes it more powerful and more successful than the
other? These are questions of enduring import for the field of psychology.
 C H A P T E R

1
Response Timing

The strengthening of an associative bond through repetitive experience is

the basic idea in the associative conceptual framework. That idea is seem-
ingly most directly evidenced in acquisition, where the conditioned re-
sponse (CR) appears after some number of conditioning trials, as if some-
thing hadbeenstrengthenedoversuccessivetrials.Thus,associative
accounts of conditioning generally begin with simple acquisition. We begin,
however, by considering the timing of the CR-when it occurs in relation to
the onset of a conditioned stimulus (CS). The basic idea in timing models is
that the animal learns the temporal intervals, and this knowledge deter-
mines its behavior. The fact that it learns the intervals in a protocol is most
directly evident in the timing of the CR.
Our model for the timing of the CR introduces many of the important
concepts in the timing framework. One concept is that remembered inter-
vals have scalarvariability. This means thatthe trial-tetrialvariability in an
interval retrieved from memory is proportional to themagnitude of that in-
terval. The bigger a magnitude read from memory, the more that magnitude
varies from one reading to the next. Another broad concept is that condi-
tioned behavior is the result of simple decisions based on the comparison
of mental magnitudes, like, for example, the mental magnitudes (signals in
the brain) that represent intervals. The animal responds when a decision
variable exceeds a threshold. The decision variable is itself created by
means of a simple arithmetic comparison, usually between acurrently
elapsing interval and a remembered interval. A third concept is that deci-
sion variables are ratios, not differences. For example, the decision whether
torespond at acertain latency is based on the ratio of the currently

5
6 TIMING 1. RESPONSE

elapsed interval to aremembered interval. When thatratioexceedsa

threshold the animal responds. Unifying these three concepts is the con-
cept of the time-scale invariance of the conditioning process, which is seen
to be a consequence of these principles. Empirically, time-scale invariance
means that conditioning data areunaffected by the time scale of the experi-
ment. For example, the form of the distribution of CRs about the reinforce-
ment latency does not depend on that latency; the distributions observed
with different reinforcement latencies differ only by a scaling factor.
The most common elementary Pavlovian conditioning protocol is dia-
grammed in Fig. 1.1. A CS (typically, a tone or light) is presented for a fixed
interval T, at the end of which the unconditioned stimulus (US; also known
as reinforcement) occurs. The presentation of the CS is called a trial. Be-
cause the US is delivered coincident with the termination ofCS presenta-
tion, the trial duration and thereinforcement latency (delay between CS on-
set and reinforcement) are one and the same. The interval after a trial
during which nothing happens is the intertrial interval. Test trials without
reinforcement are given after a certain number of training trials to probe
for the strength of the CR to the CS.
If one records the distribution of conditioned responses on test trials, one
generally finds that they are maximally likelytoward the endof a trial, that is,
the mode (peak) of the distribution is close to the reinforcement latency (see
Fig. 1.4). This means that the subject generally does not react to the CS when
it is first presented (see Figs. 1.2 and 1.3). It reacts only as the time of ex-
pected reinforcement approaches. The longer the duration of a trial, that is,
the longer the reinforcement latency, the longer the CR is delayed.
Pavlov termed this phenomenon the inhibition of delay. In his conception,
delay of the US inhibited the initial occurrence of the CR. As the time to re-
inforcement grew shorter during a trial, this inhibition was released. Al-
though the phenomenon has been known to experimentalists since the
days of Pavlov, it is seldom emphasized in standard accounts of condi-
tioned behavior, because the associative conceptual framework does not
offer a readyexplanation for it. In the timing framework, in contrast, it is the
first thing to be noted about conditioned behavior, because it is direct evi-

FIG. 1.1. Time line for simple classical conditioning. The duration of the CS is
T, the reinforcement (dot) coincides with the offset of the CS. For reasons to
be explained later, the duration of this reinforcement (the duration of the US)
may be ignored. The other important interval is I, the interval between trials
(CS presentations). The sum of the I and T is C, the cycle duration.
INTRODUCTION 7

400 rns 900 rns

Time Since CS Onset
FIG. 1.2. A representative exampleof the conditioned eyeblink response ona
single test trial in an experimentin which rabbits were conditioned to blink in
response to a tone that signaled a puff of air to the scleraof the eye. The la-
tency of reinforcement on training trials (time fromCS onset todelivery of the
air puff) was alwayseither 400 ms or 900 ms, but this latency varied randomly
(unpredictably) from trial to trial. The rabbit learned toblink twice on each
trial, once at a latency of approximately 400 ms and once ata latency of ap-
proximately 900 ms. (Reproduced from Fig. 3, p. 289 of Kehoe, GrahamClarke,
& Schreurs. 1989. Copyright 0 1989 by the American Psychological Associa-
tion. Reprinted with permission.)

1001 I
FIG. 1.3. Data from a onetrial con-
textual fear conditioning experi-
ment. Rats were given a brief foot
shock 3 min after being placed in an
experimentalchamber(the con-
text). The next day, they wereagain
placed In the chamber, and their
freezing behavior (a manifestation
of fear) was scored during an8-min
test.Thepercentage of rats o b
served to be freezing was maximal
at the latency at which they had
beenshockedthepreviousday.
(From Fanselow & Stote, 1995, r e 0
produced by permission of the au- 0 1 2 3 4 5
thors.) Minutes
dence thatthe animals are in fact learning at least one of the temporalinter-
vals in the protocol, namely, the reinforcement latency.
Another property of the distribution of CRs, whose empirical generality
and theoretical importance was first emphasized by Gibbon (1977) is that
its standard deviation is proportional to its mode: The longer the CR is on
average delayed, the more variable is its latency. Thus, the coefficient of
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Title: Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train

robbers
An accurate and faithful history of their exploits and
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Author: George W. Agee

Release date: February 20, 2024 [eBook #73001]

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RUBE BURROW.
 R U B E B U R R O W,

King of Outlaws,
AND HIS

BAND OF TRAIN ROBBERS.

AN ACCURATE AND FAITHFUL HISTORY OF THEIR

EXPLOITS AND ADVENTURES.

BY
G. W. AGEE,
Superintendent Western Division Southern Express Company.

PUBLISHERS
THE HENNEBERRY COMPANY
CHICAGO
 RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR
TO HIS COMRADES AND CO-WORKERS
IN THE EXPRESS SERVICE
OF AMERICA.
“Some hapless souls are led astray,
While some, themselves, seek out the way.
Some fall, unthinking, in the pit,
While others seek about for it.

’Tis probable, if Satan should

Strive for the universal good,
And close his gates and bar them well,
Some souls would still break into Hell.”
 PREFACE.
SINCE the days of the James and Younger brothers, bold types of
Western outlawry, which were the immediate products of the late
civil war, no banditti have challenged such universal attention as
those led by the famous outlaw, Rube Burrow. The press of the
country has woven, from the wildest woof of fancy, full many a
fiction touching his daring deeds, and manufacturers of sensational
literature have made of the bandit as mystical a genius as the
“Headless Hessian of Sleepy Hollow.”
With the view of correcting the erroneous accounts heretofore
given the public, I have yielded to the solicitations of many friends in
the Express service and consented to give a faithful and accurate
history, compiled from the official reports of the detectives, detailing
the daring deeds, the thrilling scenes and hair-breadth escapes of
the outlaw and his band of highwaymen. Important confessions of
some of the principal participants in the eight train robberies
committed, covering a period of nearly four years, are also given,
without color of fiction or the caprice of fancy.
It is the province of this volume, therefore, not to laud evil
endeavor, but rather to chronicle the hapless fate of those who,
turning aside from the paths of peace and honor, elect to tread the
devious and thorny road which leads on to the open gateway, over
which is emblazoned, in letters of living fire, the accursed
malediction, “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
G. W. Agee.
Memphis, Tenn., December, 1890.
 CONTENTS.

Chapter I.
PAGE

Lamar County, Alabama—The Home of the Burrow Family

—Biographical Sketch of Rube Burrow’s Ancestors 1

Chapter II.
Rube Leaves Lamar County, Alabama—His Early Life in
the Lone Star State—His Brother Jim Joins Him—The
Bellevue, Gordon and Ben Brook, Texas, Train
Robberies 8

Chapter III.
The Genoa, Ark., Robbery, December 9, 1887—Arrest of
William Brock—His Confession 19

Chapter IV.
The Pinkertons After Rube and Jim Burrow in Lamar
County—Their Narrow Escape 27

Chapter V.
Rube and Jim Board an L. & N. Railway Train at Brock’s
Gap—Their Arrest and the Subsequent Escape of Rube 31

Chapter VI.
Rube Burrow Returns to Lamar County—Joe Jackson
Joins Him in March, 1888—Their Trip into Baldwin
County, Alabama 38

Chapter VII.
The Ride into Arkansas to Liberate Jim Burrow—Failure
and Return to Mississippi 42

Chapter VIII.
Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson Leave Arkansas—They
Turn up as Cotton Pickers in Tate County, Mississippi 45

Chapter IX.
Jim Burrow Arraigned—Trial Postponed—His Return to
Little Rock Prison—Letters Home—His Death in Prison 49

Chapter X.
The Duck Hill, Miss., Robbery—The Killing of Passenger
Chester Hughes 52

Chapter XI.
The Cold-blooded Murder of Moses Graves, the
Postmaster of Jewell, Alabama 61

Chapter XII.
Smith Joins Rube Burrow and Joe Jackson—The
Buckatunna Robbery 68

Chapter XIII.
The Capture of Rube Smith and James McClung at
Amory, Miss.—McClung’s Confession—A Plan to Rob the
Train Falls Through—A Safe Robbery Nipped in the Bud 82

Chapter XIV.
A False Alarm—The Ox-cart Trip to Florida—The
Separation—Rube Located at Broxton Ferry—His
Escape 91

Chapter XV.
Capture of Joe Jackson 104

Chapter XVI.
Confession of Leonard Calvert Brock, alias Joe Jackson,
made at Memphis, Tenn., July 19, 1890, and Corrected
and Amended at Jackson, Miss., October 16, 1890 107

Chapter XVII.
Rube Smith’s Plot to Escape from Prison—His Plans
Discovered—The Tell-tale Letters 136

Chapter XVIII.
Rube Burrow Harbored in Santa Rosa—The Flomaton
Robbery 142

Chapter XIX.
Rube Routed from Florida—The Chase into Marengo
County, Ala.—His Capture 151

Chapter XX.
Rube’s Last Desperate Act—Escape from Jail—The Deadly
Duel on the Streets of Linden—The Outlaw Killed 164

Chapter XXI.
Tragic Suicide of L. C. Brock, alias Joe Jackson—He Leaps
from the Fourth Story of the Prison into the Open
Court, Sixty Feet Below, Causing Instant Death—His
Last Statement 176

Chapter XXII.
Rube Smith’s Trial for the Buckatunna Mail Robbery—An
Unsuccessful Alibi—Perjured Witnesses—Masterly
Speeches—Conviction and Sentence 185
 Chapter XXIII.
Conclusion 191
RUBE BURROW.
 CHAPTER I.
LAMAR COUNTY, ALABAMA—THE HOME OF THE
BURROW FAMILY—BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF RUBE
BURROW’S ANCESTORS.
LAMAR County, Alabama, the home of the Burrow family, has
become historic as the lair of a robber band whose deeds of daring
have had no parallel in modern times, and the halo of romance with
which that locality has been invested has converted its rugged hills
into mountain fastnesses, its quiet vales into dark caverns, and the
humble abodes of its inhabitants into turreted fortresses and robber
castles. The county of Lamar, divested of the drapery of
sensationalism, is one of the “hill counties” of northern Alabama,
and takes high rank in the list of rich agricultural counties of the
State. It possesses a charming landscape of undulating hill and dale,
watered by limpid streams, and amid fertile valleys and on the crests
of its picturesque uplands are found the peaceful and prosperous
homes of many good and law-abiding people, thus proving that good
people are indigenous to every clime and land where the hand of
civilization has left its kindly touch. “It does not abound in grand and
sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose
and sheltered quiet.”
Lamar County was formed in 1868 from the most fertile portions
of Fayette and Marion Counties, and has changed its name three
times; first it was called Jones, then Sanford, and, finally, it was
named Lamar, in honor of the distinguished statesman and jurist
who now adorns the bench of the Supreme Court of the United
States. This section of the State, though not until the last decade
possessed of the advantages of development which more fortunate
sections have long enjoyed, has always had an excellent citizenship.
Here, in the olden time, were found ardent followers of the political
faith of the founders of the Republic, and while the bonfires of the
zealous pioneers of that day and time lighted the hill tops, the
valleys of that section of northern Alabama reverberated with the
campaign songs of their enthusiastic compatriots. From this section,
no less renowned in war than in peace, a large company of soldiers
was sent to the Creek war, and a full quota of gallant men went
forth to the Confederate army, three companies of which were in the
Twenty-sixth Alabama Infantry, one of the most superb regiments in
the Army of Northern Virginia.
This much, in truth and justice, should be said in behalf of
Lamar County, which has gained an unenviable notoriety as the
birthplace of Rube Burrow, and later as the rendezvous of his
confreres in crime. When metropolitan places, with well-equipped
police powers, give birth to such social organizations as the
anarchists in Chicago and the Italian Mafia in New Orleans, and
become asylums for organized assassins, the good people of these
cities are no more responsible for the resultant evils than are the
law-abiding people of Lamar County, Alabama, for the deeds of
outlawry of which one of her citizens, by the accident of birthplace,
was the chief exponent. The Burrow family, however, were among
the earliest settlers of Fayette County, Alabama, from which Lamar
was taken, and from their prolific stock descended a numerous
progeny, who, by the natural ties of consanguinity, formed a clan
amongst whom the bold outlaws found ready refuge when fleeing
from the hot pursuit organized in the more populous localities which
were the scenes of their daring crimes. Chief among Rube’s
partisans and protectors was James A. Cash, a brother-in-law.
Allen H. Burrow, the father of Rube, was born in Maury County,
Tenn., May 21, 1825, his parents moving to Franklin County, Ala., in
1826, and who, in 1828, settled within the vicinity of his present
home in Lamar County, Ala. In August, 1849, Allen Burrow married
Martha Caroline Terry, a native of Lamar County, who was born in
1830. From this union were born ten children—five boys and five
girls. John T. Burrow, the oldest child, lives near Vernon, the county
seat of Lamar. Apart from harboring his brother Rube, while an
outlaw, he has always borne a fair reputation. He is of a rollicking
disposition, possesses a keen sense of the ridiculous, is a fine mimic
and recounts an anecdote inimitably, and, though crude of speech
and manner, having little education, is a man of more than average
intelligence. Jasper Burrow, the second son, is a quiet, taciturn man;
he lives with his father, and is reputed to be of unsound mind. Four
of the daughters married citizens of Lamar County. The youngest,
who bears the prosaic name of Ann Eliza, is a tall blonde of twenty
summers, and is yet unmarried. She is of a defiant nature, has a
comely and attractive face, and is a favorite with many a rustic youth
in the vicinage of the Burrow homestead. She was devoted to Rube,
afforded a constant medium of communication between the parental
home and the hiding place of the outlaws, and was the courier
through whom Rube Smith was added to the robber band while in
rendezvous in Lamar County.
Reuben Houston Burrow, the outlaw, was born in Lamar County,
December 11, 1854. His early life in Lamar was an uneventful one.
He was known as an active, sprightly boy, apt in all athletic pursuits,
a swift runner, an ardent huntsman and a natural woodsman. He
possessed a fearless spirit, was of a merry and humorous turn, a
characteristic of the Burrow family, but he developed none of those
traits which might have foreshadowed the unenviable fame acquired
in after-life.
James Buchanan Burrow, the fifth and youngest son, was born
in 1858, and was, therefore, four years the junior of his brother
Rube, to whose fortunes his own were linked in the pursuit of train
robbing, and which gave to the band the name of the “Burrow
Brothers” in the earliest days of its organization.
The facilities for acquiring education in the rural districts of the
South, half a century ago, were limited, and Allen Burrow grew to
manhood’s estate, having mastered little more than a knowledge of
the “three R’s,” and yet talent for teaching the young idea how to
shoot was so scant that Allen Burrow, during the decade
immediately preceding the late war, was found diversifying the
pursuits of tilling the soil with that of teaching a country school.
Among his pupils was the unfortunate postmaster of Jewell, Ala.,
Moses Graves, who was wantonly killed by Rube Burrow in 1889.
Many anecdotes are current in Lamar County, illustrating the
primitive methods of pedagogy as pursued by Allen Burrow. It is said
that the elder Graves, who had several sons as pupils, withdrew the
hopeful scions of the Graves household from the school for the
reason that after six months’ tuition, he having incidentally enrolled
the whole contingent in a spelling bee, they all insisted on spelling
every monosyllable ending with a consonant by adding an extra one,
as d-o-g-g, dog; b-u-g-g, bug.
Allen Burrow served awhile in Roddy’s cavalry during the civil
war, but his career as a soldier was brief and not marked by any
incident worthy of note. Soon after the close of the war he made
some reputation as a “moonshiner,” and was indicted about 1876 for
illicit distilling. He fled the country in consequence, but after an
absence of two years he returned and made some compromise with
the Government, since which time he has quietly lived in Lamar
County. While possessed of some shrewdness, he is a typical
backwoodsman, with the characteristic drawling voice and quaint
vernacular peculiar to his class. Martha Terry, the wife of Allen
Burrow, claims to be possessed of the peculiar and hereditary gift of
curing, by some strange and mysterious agency, many of the ills to
which flesh is heir, and had she lived in the days of Cotton Mather
she might have fallen a victim to fire and fagot, with which
witchcraft in that day and time was punished. There are many
sensible and wholly unsuperstitious persons in northern Alabama,
where old Mrs. Burrow is well known, who believe in her occult
powers of curing cancers, warts, tumors and kindred ailments, by
the art of sorcery. Capt. J. E. Pennington, a prominent citizen, and
the present tax collector of Lamar County, tells of two instances in
his own family in which Dame Burrow removed tumors by simple
incantation. The witch’s caldron “boils and bubbles” on the
hearthstone of the Burrow home, and whether the dark and fetid
mixture contain
 “Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog;
Adder’s fork and blind worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,”

or what not, many good but credulous people come from far and
near to invoke the charm of her occult mummery, despite the fact
that our latter-day civilization has long since closed its eyes and ears
to the arts of sorcery and witchcraft. Here, amid the environments of
ignorance and superstition, evils resulting more from the inherent
infirmities of the rugged pioneer and his wife than the adversities of
fortune, the family of ten children was reared. It is from such strong
and rugged natures, uneducated and untrained in the school of right
and honesty, that comes the material of which train robbers are
made.
 CHAPTER II.
RUBE LEAVES LAMAR COUNTY, ALABAMA—HIS EARLY
LIFE IN THE LONE STAR STATE—HIS BROTHER JIM
JOINS HIM—THE BELLEVUE, GORDON AND BEN BROOK,
TEXAS, TRAIN ROBBERIES.

RUBE BURROW’s old companions in Alabama recall distinctly the day

he left Lamar County for Texas in the autumn of 1872. He left the
old and familiar scenes of his boyhood, full of hope and eager to test
the possibilities that Texas, then the Eldorado of the southern
emigrant, opened up to him. He was but eighteen years of age when
he took up his abode with his uncle, Joel Burrow, a very worthy and
upright man, who owned and tilled a small farm in Erath County,
that State. In 1876 Rube was joined by Jim Burrow, his younger
brother, who remained in Texas until 1880, when, returning to Lamar
County, Alabama, he married and resided there until 1884, when he
rejoined his brother Rube in Texas, taking his wife thither. Jim
Burrow was a “burly, roaring, roistering blade,” six feet tall, as
straight as an Indian, which race of people he very closely
resembled, with his beardless face, his high cheek bones and coal-
black hair. He was in every way fitted for following the fortunes of
Rube, and had he not succumbed to the unhappy fate of
imprisonment and early death he would have been a formidable rival
of his brother Rube in the events that marked his subsequent career.
Rube worked awhile on his uncle’s farm, but soon drifted into
that nondescript character known as a Texas cowboy. Meantime, in
1876, he married Miss Virginia Alvison, in Wise County, Texas, and
from this marriage two children were born, who are now with their
grandparents in Alabama, the elder being a boy of twelve years. This
wife died in 1880, and he again married in 1884 a Miss Adeline
Hoover, of Erath County, Texas. These events served to restrain his
natural inclinations for excitement and adventure, and it may be
truthfully said that from 1872 to 1886 Rube Burrow transgressed the
law only to the extent of herding unbranded cattle and marking
them as his own. In this pursuit he traversed the plains of Texas,
enjoying with an excess of keen delight a companionship of kindred
spirits, whose homes were in the saddle, and who found their only
shelter by day and by night under the same kindly skies. As he grew
to manhood he had given full bent to his love for the athletic
pursuits incident to life upon the then sparsely settled plains of the
Lone Star State. Taming the unbridled broncho, shooting the
antelope, and lassoing the wild steer, under whip and spur, he soon
gained fame as an equestrian, and was reckoned as the most
unerring marksman in all the adjacent country. With a reputation for
all these accomplishments, strengthened by an innate capacity for
leadership, Rube ere long gathered about him a band of trusty
comrades, of which he was easily the leader.
A short time prior to this period, at varying intervals, all Texas
had been startled by the bold and desperate adventures of Sam Bass
and his band of train robbers, with which Rube was erroneously
supposed to have been associated. Possibly inspired, however, by
the fame which Sam Bass had achieved, and the exaggerated
reports of the profits of his adventures, contrasted with the sparse
returns from his more plodding occupation, Rube was seized with a
desire to emulate his deeds of daring, and achieve at once fame and
fortune.
At this time, December 1, 1886, his party, consisting of Jim
Burrow, Nep Thornton and Henderson Bromley, returning from a
bootless excursion into the Indian Territory, rode in the direction of
Bellevue, a station on the Fort Worth and Denver Railway. Here Rube
proposed to rob the train, which they knew to be due at Bellevue at
eleven o’clock A. M. Hitching their horses in the woods a few
hundred yards away they stealthily approached a water-tank three
hundred yards west of the station, and where the train usually
stopped for water. Thornton held up the engineer and fireman, while
Rube, Bromley and Jim Burrow went through the train and robbed
the passengers, leaving the Pacific Express unmolested. They
secured some three hundred dollars in currency and a dozen or
more watches. On the train was Sergeant Connors (white), with a
squad of U. S. colored soldiers, in charge of some prisoners. From
these soldiers were taken their forty-five caliber Colt’s revolvers, a
brace of which pistols were used by Rube Burrow throughout his
subsequent career. Rube insisted on the prisoners being liberated,
but they disdained the offer of liberty at the hands of the
highwaymen and remained in charge of the crest-fallen soldiers, who
were afterwards dismissed from the service for cowardice. Regaining
their horses the party rode forth from the scene of their initial train
robbery, out into the plains, making a distance of some seventy-five
miles from the scene of the robbery in twenty-four hours.
The ill-gotten gains thus obtained did not suffice to satisfy the
greed of the newly fledged train robbers, and early in the following
January another raid was planned. At Alexander, Texas, about
seventy-five miles from Gordon, all the robbers met, and going
thence by horseback to Gordon, Texas, a station on the Texas and
Pacific Railway, they reached their destination about one o’clock
A. M., on January 23, 1887. As the train pulled out of Gordon at two
o’clock A. M., Rube and Bromley mounted the engine, covered the
engineer and fireman, and ordered them to pull ahead and stop at a
distance of five hundred yards east of the station. The murderous
looking Colt’s revolvers brought the engineer to terms, and the
commands of the highwaymen were obeyed to the letter. At the
point where the train was stopped, Jim Burrow, Thornton, and
Harrison Askew, a recruit who had but recently joined the robber
band, were in waiting. As the train pulled up, Askew’s nerve failed
him, and he cried out, “For heaven’s sake, boys, let me out of this; I
can’t stand it.” Askew’s powers of locomotion, however, had not
forsaken him, and he made precipitate flight from the scene of the
robbery. Rube and Bromley marched the engineer and fireman to
the express car and demanded admittance, while the rest of the
robbers held the conductor and other trainmen at bay. The
messenger of the Pacific Express Company refused at first to obey
the command to open the door, but put out the lights in his car. A
regular fusilade ensued, the robbers using a couple of Winchester
rifles, and after firing fifty or more shots the messenger surrendered.
About $2,275 was secured from the Pacific Express car. The U. S.
Mail car was also robbed, and the highwaymen secured from the
registered mail about two thousand dollars.
Mounting their horses, which they had left hidden in the forest
hard by, they rode off in a northerly direction, in order to mislead
their pursuers. Making a circuit to the south they came upon the
open plains, which stretched far away towards the home of the
robber band. The trackless plain gave no vestige of the flight of the
swift-footed horses as they carried their riders faster and still faster
on to their haven of safety, which they reached soon after daylight
on the second morning after the robbery.
The better to allay suspicion the robber comrades now agreed to
separate, and all made a show of work, some tilling the soil, while
others engaged in the occupation of herding cattle for the
neighboring ranch owners.
Rube and Jim Burrow, about this time, purchased a small tract of
land, paying six hundred dollars for it. They also bought a few head
of stock and made a fair showing for a few months at making an
honest living. The restless and daring spirit of Rube Burrow,
however, could not brook honest toil. As he followed the plowshare
over his newly purchased land, and turned the wild flowers of the
teeming prairie beneath the soil, he nurtured within his soul nothing
of the pride of the peaceful husbandman, but, fretting over such
tame pursuits, built robber castles anew.
While planting a crop in the spring of 1887 he had for a fellow
workman one William Brock, and finding in him a dare-devil and
restless spirit he recounted to him his successful ventures at
Bellevue and at Gordon. Thus another recruit was added to his
forces, and one, too, who was destined to play an important role, as
subsequent events will show. Time grew apace, and Rube wrote, in
his quaint, unscholarly way, affectionate epistles to his relatives in
Lamar County, Ala., sending them some of his ill-gotten gains. Two
of these letters, written on the same sheet of paper, the one to his
brother, John T. Burrow, the other to his father and mother, at
Vernon, Ala., are here given verbatim et literatim, and show that a
collegiate education is not a necessary adjunct to the pursuit of train
robbing.

Erath County, Tex., March 10, 1887.

Dear Brother and family:
All is well. No nuse too rite. the weather is good for work
and wee ar puting in the time. Wee will plant corn too morrow.
Mee and james Will plant 35 acreys in corn. Wee wont plant Eny
Cotton Wee hav a feW Ooats sode and millet. i am going too
Stephens Vill too day and i Will male this Letr. J. T. when you rite
Direct your letr too Stephens Vill Erath county and tell all of the
Rest too direct there letrs too the same place. i want you and
pah too keep that money john you keep $30.00 and pah $20.00.
the Reason i want you to hav $30 is because you have the
largest family. john i don’t blame pah and mother for not coming
out here for they ortoo no there Buisness. john i want you too
rite too me. i did think i would Come Back in march. i cant come
now. Rite.
R. H. Burrow
too J. T. Burrow.

Erath County, Texas, March 10, 1887.

Dear father & mother:
A
Eye will Rite you a few Lines. all is well. Elizabeth has a
boy. it was bornd on the 28 of february. She has done well.
Mother i want you too pick mee out one of the prityest widows
in ala. i will come home this fawl. pah i want john thomas too
hav 30 dollars of that money eye want you too Buy analyzer a
 gold Ring. it wont cost more than $4. i told her i would send her
a present. pah that will take a rite smart of your part of the
money but it will come all right some day for I am going to sell
out some time and come and see all of you. Rite.
R H Burrow
too A H Burrow.

A
Elizabeth was the wife of his brother Jim.

“We have sowed a few oats,” wrote Rube. Whether this was
meant as a double-entendre, and referred not only to a strictly
domesticated brand of that useful cereal, but also to the “wild oats”
which Rube and Jim had been sowing, and which bore ample
fruitage in after years, it is useless to speculate.
In the midst of seed-time Rube tired of his bucolic pursuits, and
concluded to try his fortunes at Gordon again, and on the tenth of
May the chief gathered his little band at his farm in Erath County
and, under cover of a moonless night, rode northward to the Brazos
River, about fifty miles distant. They found to their disappointment
that the river was very high and was overflowing its banks,
rendering it impossible to cross it by ferry or otherwise, and
spending the day in the adjacent woodland, they rode back to
Alexander the following night, to await the subsidence of the floods,
which, however, kept the Brazos River high for some weeks.
Again, on the night of June 3d, by appointment, Henderson
Bromley and Bill Brock met Rube and Jim Burrow at their home near
Stephensville, in Erath County, and, after consultation, Ben Brook,
Texas, a station on the Texas and Pacific Railway, seventy-five miles
south of Fort Worth, was selected as the scene of their third train
robbery.
After a hard night’s ride they were at daylight, on June 4th,
within a few miles of Ben Brook. Having ascertained that the north-
bound train would pass the station about 7 P. M. they secreted
themselves in the woods near by until dark, at which time they rode
quietly to within a few hundred yards of the station. Rube Burrow
and Henderson Bromley had blackened their faces with burnt cork,
while Jim Burrow and Brock used their pocket handkerchiefs for
masks. Rube and Bromley boarded the engine as it pulled out of the
station and, with drawn revolvers, covered the engineer and
fireman, and ordered the former to stop at a trestle a few hundred
yards beyond the station. Here Jim Burrow and Brock were in
waiting, and the two latter held the conductor and passengers at
bay, while the two former ordered the engineer to break into the
express car with the coal pick taken from the engine, and again the
Pacific Express Company was robbed, the highwaymen securing
$2,450. The passengers and mail were unmolested.
Regaining their horses within thirty minutes after the train first
stopped at the station, the robbers rode hard and fast until noon of
the following day. Through woodland and over plain, ere dawn of
day they had fled far from the scene of the robbery of the previous
night, and a drenching rain, which commenced to fall at midnight,
left not a trace of the course of their flight. Here the robbers
remained in quiet seclusion, disguising their identity as train robbers
by a seeming diligence in agricultural pursuits, until September 20,
1887, when they made a second raid on the Texas Pacific Road,
robbing the train at Ben Brook station again.
When Rube and Bromley mounted the engine, wonderful to
relate, it was in charge of the same engineer whom the robbers had
“held up” in the robbery of June 4th, and the engineer, recognizing
Rube and Bromley, said, as he looked down the barrels of their Colt’s
revolvers, “Well, Captain, where do you want me to stop this time?”
Rube laconically replied “Same place,” and so it was that the train
was stopped and robbed, the same crew being in charge, on the
identical spot where it had been robbed before. The messenger of
the Pacific Express Company made some resistance, but finally the
robbers succeeded in entering his car and secured $2,725, or about
$680 each.
 The highwaymen reached their rendezvous in Erath County,
having successfully committed four train robberies.
About the middle of November following, Rube and Jim paid a
visit to their parents in Lamar County, Ala., Jim taking his wife there
and Rube his two children. They remained in Lamar County some
weeks, visiting their relatives and walking the streets of Vernon, the
county seat, unmolested, as neither of the two men had at that time
ever been suspected of train robbing.
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