Another story of his changeling ability was when the same sheriff got word that Bill was probably heading for his girlfriend’s house over near Piney Grove. The sheriff got three bloodhounds from old Bob Gant and gave them a smell of Railroad’s hat that had been captured in an earlier escapade and set out on his trail. At the height of the chase they noticed that they had four bloodhounds rather than three but no one could remember exactly how many they had started out with. But in the meantime the hounds followed Bill’s trail right up to his girlfriend’s house. The young lady was sitting on the front porch and when asked if she had seen Bill lately she replied “No, not for a while.” The hounds acted like they wanted to go on so they lit out on the trail again but a short time later they noticed they had three hounds instead of four. The fourth hound, a big black one, was gone. The sheriff never could understand where that fourth hound had come from but the black folks just laughed with merriment knowing that the black hound was in fact old Bill himself. He had fooled everyone once again by chasing himself to his own girlfriend’s house. Just the thought of old Bill sitting and a ’courtin her on her front porch while the posse headed off on the trail brought tears to their eyes as they told and retold the story over the years.
Regardless of the old wive's tales, to say that Bill was clever was an understatement as illustrated by the following account. One day the sheriff and his posse were on a train heading toward Atmore where they had heard the outlaw was hiding. But they never guessed that Railroad was actually hiding in the rail car right behind them and so when the posse got off and went looking for him Bill just stayed on the train until they were gone then stole all of the canned goods in the boxcar. When the story got out the next day everyone in the county had a good laugh at the expense of the sheriff and his men. Each story continued to feed on the previous one until his exploits had grown to legendary status.
