Ogden Daily Standard | 1919-05-16 | Page 4 | And Now the Brigands of the Air

AND NOW THE BRIGANDS OF THE AIR. When Captain Fetters ate breakfast in Ogden and had supper in Sacramento, the two cities were brought nearer to each other in transportation trans-portation than were Ogden and Salt Lake in 1 869 at the time of the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. It was almost a year lt- A.'kr viilv-n-l i- 9lf I 1L0 L...'U ...... i i. . iv-u nn. lainuau lu uuu uum. was ULUH. These flights from the coast to Ogden and back demonstrate the possibilities of aerial navigation in the peaceful affairs of people Air travel will be so common in the near future that one aviator predicts thers will be bandits of the air who will swoop down, grab their loot and sail off. When that dreadful state of affairs is realized, some of the dreams of childhood will cease to be simply dreams. To be chased through the air, to sail high and drop has been the nightmare night-mare of more than one youngster retiring with disordered stomach. Out in Winnemucca, Nevada, when George Nixon was cashier of the Winnemucca National bank, a robbery occurred. Without warning, warn-ing, masked men on horses rode up, dismounted, stepped into the bank, demanded and secured $30,000 in gold and paper and rode away. The alarm was sounded and a pursuit party organized, but too late, as the speeding horses were out of sight. The bandits were trailed north through Paradise valley and on to the juniper forest on the boundary line of Nevada and Idaho, which is an almost uninhabited uninhab-ited wilderness. They had planned well. Starting from the junipers, they had left relays of saddle horses, which they used in making their hurried ride away from the pursuing officers. Now, if a day soon, a bold aviator flies into the junipers, selects a landing spot and a cache I and then flies out at the approach of evening and raids that some Winnemucca bank, or a near-by institution, by the aid of confederates who will do the actual hold-up work, how easy it will be to fly back to the rendezvous without discovery or prospect of capture. Twenty years ago every Union Pacific express train carrying heavy treasure out of Ogden, had a heavily armed guard, and an armored train was kept in readiness at Evanston to answer an alarm. That was when Butch Cassidy and his Hole-in-the-Wall gang were feared, for they were known to have planned a haul on one of the money trains that frequently went through on passenger time, and were known as silk trains. If some day a Butch Cassidy in an airplane sails out of the Hole-in-the-Wall and attacks a "silk train," there will be material for a page story stranger than fiction.