14. The Terrible Nineteenth-Century Outlaw Brothers
Outlaw Frank Reno (1837 – 1868) was raised in Jackson County, Indiana, by strictly religious parents. They saw to it that their children observed all the strictures, attended church regularly, and spent all day Sunday reading the Bible. It backfired with Frank and his younger brother, John, who rebelled and turned bad early on. By their early teens, the brothers had gained a terrible reputation as notorious delinquents. They drank, brawled, cheated travelers in crooked card games, and were suspected of horse theft and of committing a series of arsons around the county.
Fearing a backlash, their father fled with them to Missouri, where they lived for a few years. They returned to Indiana in 1860, but they had not been forgotten. To escape angry neighbors, Frank and John enlisted when the Civil War broke out and became serial bounty jumpers. They would join a regiment to collect enlistment bonuses, which steadily grew as the war progressed, then desert at the earliest opportunity. They would then join another regiment elsewhere with fake names, collect more enlistment bonuses, and repeat the cycle.
