A harder set of cowboys
you seldom ever see.
—“Legend of Sam Bass”
It has become the literary custom to recall our bonanza frontier less as an economic phenomenon than as a backdrop for bloodshed, mayhem, and assorted turns of vigor and violence. Early California, for example, is today known less as the scene of the accomplishments of James Fair, Charles Crocker, and Leland Stanford than as the arena for the armed forays of Joaquin Murietta, Black Bart, Dick Fellows, and various other gunmen. Since this is the accepted practice, it is entirely appropriate to introduce the gold-rush days of the Black Hills with a brief account of the banditry and thuggery which accompanied the early growth of that last frontier.
The quotation at the head of this chapter is one verse of an old folk ballad, “The Legend of Sam Bass,” the not particularly inspiring saga of the life and death of an Indiana-born horse thief and road agent. Actually, Bass had little to do with the history of the Hills, and as anybody knows who has ever whistled or sung his song, the bulk of the chronicle concerns his struggle against the Texas Rangers.
On the other hand, Sam Bass will long live in Black Hills history, for regardless of his other accomplishments he went to his glory bearing the credit for having originated the fine art of stage robbery in that Dakota wilderness. The Black Hills, like every other gold region, enjoyed but scant holiday from the pestiferous road agents. During 1875 and 1876, when the region was filling up, it seemed that there was plenty to occupy the imagination of every individual who was able to make the tortuous trip from the railroad. But by 1877 the area had calmed down to such an extent that idle hands could occasionally be counted in the dram shops, and the time was ripe for the devil to get in his work.
From the point of view of geography the Hills presented ideal conditions for armed assault. The two major stage lines leading into the region were the Cheyenne-Black Hills Line, running through two hundred miles of desolate emptyland, and the Sidney Short Route, less long by some thirty miles, but passing through equally lonely country. In addition, one freight and stage line came in from the east, from Fort Pierre, and another from the north, following the general heading of Custer’s 1874 expedition. The gold, though, most often traveled the fastest route, out to the Union Pacific at Cheyenne or Sidney.
During the first twenty months or so of the Black Hills gold rush, armed guards were not normally counted among the personnel of the stage coaches. As a matter of fact, in most instances it was to be questioned whether or not any gold rode the stages, for the going was generally thin in the diggings, and the average operator accumulated his bullion for several months before amassing a shipment large enough to be worth the trouble and worry. For all the wealth of the Homestake, the Hills by no means repeated California’s early history, when every stage worth tying a horse to carried at least some treasure. And yet, in the springtime most of the miners cleaned up their winter’s take, it was commonly understood, and ... well, Sam Bass must have thought, every good thing must have a beginning.
In March, 1877, Bass organized a gang of cutthroats in Deadwood, and the brief period when one could ride the coaches in comparative safety came to an end. It was not much of a gang that the legendary bandit gathered around him, the five other men being mostly cowardly and quite worthless, either as adventurers or as strategists. Bass himself was little more than a “punk,” as he would be called today, and, as a matter of fact, did not earn his immortality until much later, in Texas, where he was shot down in a barber chair by a Ranger.
The gang, if they might so be called, foregathered on the snowy night of March 25 in Deadwood and, after consuming sufficient whiskey to enable them to stand the cold, made their way down the south road to a point a few miles from town where they might intercept the incoming stage from Cheyenne. What genius of diabolical planning led them to attack an inbound conveyance, which could be carrying little more than ordinary mail, rather than the “down” stage, which might possibly be loaded with bullion, has never been figured out, but at any rate they camped themselves in the snow and waited.