'That one there is worth more than all you've gotten so far,' he said.
    Hobek leaned his rifle against his leg and bent over to pick up the package.  Instantly Trousdale slammed the mallet down on his head.
    'I knocked his brains out with the third blow,' he reported to his superintendent.
    He armed himself with the bandit's rifle and gave Hobek's two .45 Colt revolvers to the mail clerk and the helper, stationing them at the rear end of the car.  He turned out the lights and waited nearly two hours for the second bandit to make an appearance.  When nothing happened, he finally fired a shot through the roof of the car.
    'The other bandit came to the door of the car.
    'Anything wrong, Frank?' he called. 'Frank?'
    As soon as Trousdale was able to see the second bandit's head silhouetted against the faint light in the doorway, he fired, killing the man instantly.
    After waiting about an hour more to see if the pair had any accomplices, Trousdale and his helpers loaded the bodies, the guns and what might have been the loot aboard the baggage car.  At their signal, the engineer backed the engine and two cars back to the rest of the train.
    While the hold-up was in progress, Conductor Erkel had slipped out of the last car carrying a 'telegraphone'.  He walked back to where Flagman F. Kendall was protecting the rear of the train, and together they hastened down the track to Mofeta.  There they attached the primitive portable telephone to the telegraph wires, and after much shouting over the lines, managed to let the dispatcher in Del Rio know about the situation.  He immediately notified Sanderson, and Sheriff Joe Bean of Tgerrell County started rounding up a posse.
    The conductor and the flagman returned to the train in time to welcome Trousdale and his helpers with open arms, and to view the grisly cargo aboard the baggage car.  The bandits' horses were found near the train, and six sticks of dynamite, together with an 'infernal machine', were found on the bodies, but no accomplices ever turned up.
    Number 9 puffed into Sanderson just as the sheriff and his posse were about to go to the rescue.  Trousdale's actions were given official sanction by the Sanderson Grand Jury, and the train was allowed to go on its way.
    Trousdale later received a gold medal from the grateful passengers aboard the train, a letter of commendation, a gold watch and a $100 reward from Wells Fargo & Co., and an additional reward of $500 from Southern Pacific, all in appreciation of his heroism in the face of danger.
    So ended the last passenger train hold-up on our lines in Texas and Louisiana.  Trousdale was transferred to another railroad to prevent any possible reprisal, as was the custom in such situations, and he lived to complete 46 years with Wells Fargo and its successor, the Railway Express Co.  He retired in 1945 after a long and useful career and passed away quietly in Columbia, Tenn. In 1953."

(From The Story of American Railroads by Stewart H. Holbrook.  Copyright 1947 by Crown Publishers, Inc.  Originally used by permission of the publisher)

    "By the time Perry was safely put away, and Evans and Sontag had quit robbing trains, the profession of train robbery was on the downgrade.  Well-made and extra heavy express cars doubtless had an effect in discouraging the practice.  Train robberies dropped from 19 in 1900 to seven in 1905.  Nor did they ever increase much again.  There were, however, a few spectacular affairs after 1905, and two of the outstanding jobs occurred on the much robbed Southern Pacific.  On March 13, 1912, two men made the fatal mistake of holding up the 'Sunset Express' on the San Antonio-El Paso run at a water stop called Dryden, in Texas.   David A. Trousdale was the Wells-Fargo messenger aboard.  He inveigled one of the two bandits into stooping over to pick up from the floor what Trousdale told him was a valuable package.  As he did so, Trousdale picked up a heavy mallet that was used for cracking ice and let go a blow so mighty it killed the thug then and there.
    The other thug was outside the car, on the track.  Picking up the dead man's rifle, Trousdale waited until he saw a good chance, then drilled the second thug neatly through the head.  It was noble work, work more likely to give parasites pause than any amount of moral suasion and pious words.  Two murderous parasites dead in two minutes.  The train crew, glad to be helpful, tossed the second body into the express car with the other, and the 'Sunset Express' went on, a little late but still intact, and with Messenger Trousdale cleaning up the mussed up car.  One of the dead men proved to be Gil Fitzpatrick, said to have been the last of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, terrors in their day.  The other was one Ed Welch.