The Syrup Bandit

The Syrup Bandit

  Legend of Sack Harrum

  By Tevin Hansen

  Copyright Tevin Hansen 2013

  1

  If Sack Harrum held a door open for you, or let you go first, or offered you a stick of bubble gum (which had been invented around his time) and you did not respond with the proper courteous reply, Sack might’ve said to you, “A simple thank you would do!”

  Such were the polite ways of Sack Harrum, twelve years old, who’d never robbed anyone of anything in all his life…until the day he accidently robbed a train full of sugar.

  Typically, things such as a train full of sugar do not get robbed by accident. Back during Sack’s time, these types of things did happen, but these heists were always accomplished by professional train robbers. And train robbers are after money, not sugar.

  Picture this:

  A young man not quite a teenager (but nearly as tall as a man) standing in the center of a railway track. He is wearing a dusty blue handkerchief pulled up over his mouth and nose, a cowboy hat pulled down low, and brandishing a long thin walking stick that he keeps pointed at the slow-moving train, which suddenly begins to stop. Then the two conductors—one very old, one very young—bring the cargo train to a grinding halt, exit quickly, and then run for their lives.

  Impossible, but true.

  This was how Sack Harrum accidently robbed a train: by holding out a stick (which the conductors mistook for a rifle) and pretending to be a train robber, which he most certainly was not.

  Sack hollered to the two scared-y-cat conductors, “You didn’t have to stop on account of me! I was only pretending at being a train robber! Please come back and say how-do-you-do!”

  There would be no introductions, not today. The train conductors had no intention of stopping to chat with the young man whom they’d mistaken for a dangerous train robber. Their only wish was to get away as fast as they could and not look back.

  “Hmff,” Sack mumbled. “I declare this a conundrum.”

  Either way, this was a golden opportunity for Sack to explore the train.

  “Now that’s what I call treasure!” Sack said after he’d had a chance to look around. The train, ten boxcars long, had been en route to a northern country (Canada) when it had been taken siege by a lone robber—him. Ten whole box cars stuffed with bags of SUGAR in the 5lb, 10lb, and 25lb variety.

  By nightfall, the train had been emptied of thousands of pounds of its sweet-tasting cargo. It took approximately one full workday to unload one box car. Nine boxcars remained untouched.

  “One boxcar of sugar is all I’ll ever need,” Sack decided, wiping his sweaty face on his shirt and deciding to call it a day. He’d used the wheelbarrow (discovered in boxcar one) to heave his treasure trove to a not-too-far-off patch of trees, where he made a pile—about one hundred piles, in fact, each one forming a ring around a tree. All this happened less than a hundred yards from the train tracks.

  “Certainly nothing genius about my plan,” Sack admitted. “The genius lay in its simplicity!” Then he spat, which was customary at the time, and headed for home.

  2

  The next morning brought two surprises. The first surprise had gotten there long before Sack: law officers, two of them. Plus the two train conductors, who were busy telling a great big fib about what happened the day before.

  Sack stayed hidden amongst the trees, still close enough to listen in on their conversation. The easy part was remaining unseen. The hard part was not laughing as the two conductors told their side of the story.

  “Must’ve been a dozen of them!” said the elder conductor. “Train robbers! Each of them a blood-thirsty killer! Every one of them with a look of pure hatred in their eye! Might’ve been the Wilcox gang, the most famous train robbers of all time!”

  His partner nodded.

  “Then again,” added the first conductor. “Perhaps my eyes aren’t what they used to be?”

  “Well my eyes are perfectly fine,” said the second, much younger conductor. “And I say there were at least two dozen of them. Vicious bandits, they were! Each one had a rifle longer than my arm!”

  Sack had to clamp a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.

  The two policemen took down the conductor’s statements, made some notes, asked a few pertinent questions, and did their jobs well despite knowing from the get-go that they were being told a stinker.

  The first policeman said with a smirk, “Well they’re gone now, aren’t they? Those dozens of robbers, I mean, with their arm-length rifles…”

  The second policeman said, “’Fraid there’s nothing more we can do for you. So, I s’pose you two brave conductors better be off now, right?”

  “What about the stolen loot!” The conductors began to complain. “We could lose our jobs over this! There’s an entire boxcar full of sugar missing!”

  The first policeman said, “Are you sure they were all full? Because if they were full, that would mean an awful lot of paperwork. We’d have to go back to the police station, fill out all necessary forms, hundreds of them—in duplicate, of course. It could take days.”

  “Maybe a week,” said the second policeman. “I write awfully slow.”

  Both of the conductors took a long look at each other, thinking it through. The older train conductor finally said, “You know what? On second thought…”

  “Yes. Perhaps there were only nine boxcars of sugar,” said the second conductor. “No need for all that paperwork, officers. We’re already a day late anyhow. Best be off! Besides, too many train robbers ‘round these parts…”

  And that was the end of the investigation.

  Soon Sack heard the sound of the train coming to life. He remained where he was, hidden among the trees until he was sure the law officers, the conductors, and the train were long gone. Then it was time to figure out what to do with the loot.

  Then she came along, complicating everything.