This is the opening scene of a screenplay Chris Hubbell and I wrote some years ago. It’s based on the life of Bill Miner, allegedly the first outlaw to coin the order ‘Hands Up!’ But he was much more than a bank- and train robber – much more than even the excellent Richard Farnsworth movie The Grey Fox recounts. Hunted relentlessly by the man who eventually captured him many years later, Bill decamped to London (England) where he became a High Society fixture and a successful gambler. Later he travelled to South Africa and planned to rob the gold trains which carried billions (in today’s currency) of dollars worth of gold from the Witwatersrand mines to Johannesberg. A relatively sane man, he saw that he stood no chance against the machine-gun armed guards. He returned to the USA where he resumed his train- and bank-robbing career at an age when most men are long retired. Inevitably he was captured and lived the rest of his life under remarkably comfortable prison conditions and sharing almost daily reminiscences with the veteran lawman who had hunted him all his outlaw life. Our movie ends before his capture, with his last train robbery – the locomotive’s boiler exploded by Bill’s infamous .500 Elephant Gun, a gift from Lord Smallwood whose daughter Bill was about to marry before he had so hastily to flee England. Much of the South African material is based on my book