The robbery netted the thieves a mere $15. The gang fled into the Indian nation where, on October 29, 1897, they robbed the till of the Crozier and Nutter Store in the town of Cushing in Payne County. They even stole a new pair of boots from a traveling salesman. The frustrated gang members then went through the passenger coaches and robbed everyone down to their last dollar.
There was no safe, let alone money, to be found. "You got to use a lot of dynamite to dent a big safe like that," Al Jennings answered knowingly.Ī few seconds later, the entire car blew up, sending a shower of wooden and iron splinters in all directions. "How much dynamite did you use, Al?" Frank asked his brother. The baggage car clerk and the outlaws leaped from the train car and ran some distance from it, waiting. He inserted a long fuse into one stick, lit it, and placed the dynamite next to the safe. "I've been waiting for that," Al Jennings said and he produced several sticks of bound dynamite. They boarded the baggage car, but again could not open the safe. Al and Frank Jennings, Little Dick West and the O'Malley brothers found the train stopped at a water station eight miles south of Minco. These miserable failures were capped by a disastrous raid on a southbound Rock Island passenger train at 11 a.m. The Jennings brothers, their horses exhausted, fell behind and then came to a panting stop as they watched their prey chug from sight. The engineer leaned from the window of the locomotive's cabin, waved a friendly hello, and kept going. Some days later, Jennings and his brother Frank rode alongside a fast-moving Santa Fe train, near Bond Switch, firing their six-guns in the air as a signal to the engineer to stop. The train raced on into the night as Jennings and the rest of the outlaws stood foolishly in the darkness. Jennings, screaming for the engineer to halt, finally leaped out of the way at the last moment. The engineer, however, kept his hand on the throttle and the train roared forward. (image from the Jay Robert Nash Collection)Ī few nights later, Al Jennings tried to flag down another train by standing directly in the center of the railroad tracks, holding a lantern and frantically waving a red flag. They rode off cursing their bad luck, which, as all their fumbling criminal acts would laughingly demonstrate, was really colossal stupidity.Īl Jennings, an Oklahoma bandit who botched his every attempt at robbery, later claiming he had been a great bandit.
On the night of August 16, 1897, Al and Frank Jennings, with Little Dick West and Morris and Pat O'Malley, stopped a southbound Santa Fe train at Edmond, but they were unable to shoot or blast the safe open. Under Al's leadership, they planned to rob trains. They were later joined by several members of the Doolin Gang. marshal's badges and using them to collect "tolls" from gullible trail herders moving their cattle through the Oklahoma Territory. In the mid-1890s, while working as cowboys, Al and Frank Jennings decided to become outlaws. Al and Frank Jennings did, indeed, follow that criminal pursuit and, Al, the leader of a motley gang, proved to be the most incompetent outlaw of the Old West. Jennings, were a fun-loving lot who dreamed of becoming bandits.
One of the more comic characters of the American frontier, Al Jennings, born on November 25, 1863, was raised with his brothers Edward, Frank, and John at Kiowa Creek, Oklahoma, near the town of Woodward. Al Jennings: The Most Inept Outlaw of the Old WestĪl Jennings: The Most Inept Outlaw of the Old West by Jay Robert Nash
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