The Black Hills, Mid-Continent Resort

by Albert N. Williams

The holdup took place in midafternoon, as the driver was stopping the coach to water the horses. In the gunplay three men were killed, and the bandits escaped with the loot from the treasure chest, which they apparently managed to chisel open. Ten miles away one of the guards came upon a party of horsemen, who returned to the scene of the carnage; but upon their arrival they found the coach despoiled of its gold.

In many such cases the bandits would have been recognized as local or near-local citizens; but in this instance all of the desperadoes appeared to be strangers to the Hills, and consequently the law officers had very little except guesswork to guide them in their pursuit. Guesswork coupled with just plain snooping soon uncovered a trail, however, for one of the stage agents turned up a ranch owner who gave the information that a small group of men had, on the very evening of the holdup, bought a light spring wagon from him. Such a transaction was unusual enough to indicate that the purchasers were by no means individuals of legitimate calling, and in all probability were the actual bandits. Setting out on this trail, the agent managed to trace them and their wagon all the way to Cheyenne, where the group had apparently turned to the east.

By that time persons who had seen them in passing had recognized them, and their names were broadcast to the marshals and sheriffs of all the eastern regions of the plains. Day after day the stage agent followed their trail east, across the Missouri, across the border of Nebraska, and on to the pleasant town of Atlantic, in Iowa. By that time the wagon had been discarded and the gang had broken up, and the agent was following only one spoor—the track of a young man who was always seen with a strange, heavy pack on his back.

In the town of Atlantic the trail came to an abrupt end, and indeed the mystery might never have been solved had it not been for a strange display in the street window of a local bank. Pausing to see what it might be that was engaging the attention of a crowd at the window, the agent was astounded to behold part of the very loot he was pursuing—two bullion bricks stamped with serial numbers which identified them beyond a doubt as part of the Canyon Springs treasure.

Upon questioning, the banker proudly asserted that his son had only the day before returned from a successful adventure in the Black Hills, and had, as a matter of fact, found a gold mine, which he had sold for the very bricks making up the exhibit.

Gently the agent disabused the banker of this sad misapprehension, and, enlisting the aid of the local Sheriff, had the prodigal son arrested.

The unfortunate conclusion to this tale of detective expertness is that although the gold was eventually returned to the Homestake, the young bandit escaped from the train which was carrying him back to Cheyenne, and was never thereafter apprehended. As for the other four robbers and the rest of the treasure, no further trace of either was ever discovered.

Although banditry and skulduggery played a very great part in the tales of most of the other bonanza gold fields, the Black Hills story was for the most part happily without extraordinary violence. Much more conspicuous in the history of the Hills than the desperate adventures of bandits are the exploits of the folk heroes who rode the Deadwood legend into immortality. Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Deadwood Dick, Preacher Smith, all of these amazing personalities achieved a lasting fame during the early days of this later frontier, not for any deeds of derring-do in the Sam Bass fashion, but for the old American custom of living and dying in a high and wide manner.

In all probability Deadwood Dick has carried the saga of the Hills farther and to a greater audience, both in this country and abroad, than any of the others, and for that reason, as well as for the strange circumstance that he never existed, it is perhaps well to tell his story first.

Dick, who never had a last name, was nothing more nor less than the happy creation of an overworked literary side-liner eking out a living in the late seventies. Having exhausted the possible plot complexities of such heroes as Seth Jones and Duke Darrall, Messrs. Beadle and Adams, proprietors of that stupendous literary zoo, The Pocket Library (published weekly at 98 William Street, New York, price five cents), urged their hack, Edward L. Wheeler, to crank out a new character. This Shakespeare of the sensational, having recently heard of the brave doings in Deadwood, of the Black Hills, promptly created a latter-day Leatherstocking, Deadwood Dick.