“No!” Sam Bass’ square jaw was set and his mouth tight beneath the brown mustache. “No, sir! There’s folks in Denton I want to show a few. They always said I’d never amount to nothin’, a-runnin’ around the country like I did, clean down to Dallas, to race the Denton Mare. I want to parade down the street a-throwin’ twenty-dollar gold-pieces over the bars. We’ll have a look, though, before we ride in.”
Jack Davis, whose nerves were tense from uncertainty these days, and who shared none of Sam Bass’ pleasure at nearing Denton, nodded gloomily.
“’S a good idee,” he said. “But me, I wisht we was high-tailin’ it for South America.”
To which Sam replied with a glint of white teeth beneath his mustache, as they squatted on the edge of the bottoms, waiting for dusk and his trip to the house of a certain good friend.
If Sheriff Everhart and certain others of the oldsters in the community had looked askance at Sam and his wild ways, almost without exception the younger generation had been always on his side. As the owner of that little sorrel beauty, The Denton Mare, he had been known far and wide; known and liked immensely.
It was not, altogether, that he was a rider without peer; a dead shot with Winchester or Colt; leader in any daring enterprise of “the boys,” a master cowboy. Nor was his popularity born wholly of generosity and a certain rough chivalry, though these qualities he had in large measure. Others have had the every characteristic of Sam Bass, yet have waked no such fierce loyalty as this stocky, dark-eyed cowboy knew; such admiration in Cowland, where he is a heroic figure even today.
From friends in Denton Sam learned that an Ogallala man, an ex-express messenger, had suspected the six cowboys of the train robbery, though the Officials had not been suspicious of them as, in the days after the robbery, they mingled with sheriffs and marshals and railroad detectives in Ogallala. He had trailed the party southward, this ex-messenger, and spying upon their camp had heard them discuss the crime; had learned their plans, their real names; had even seen them handling bright new gold-pieces of the year 1877. His knowledge he had communicated to the officials. The law wanted Sam Bass and Jack Davis—wanted them hard.
So to Jack Davis, hiding in the elm-bottoms, Sam Bass took back the story of the search and the large reward offered for them. To the authenticated report of the death of Collins and Heffridge, two of their gang, he added the account of the killing of another, Jim Berry, in his home town, Mexico, Missouri, where Berry’s shining new gold-pieces had connected him with the robbery.
“That leaves just three out o’ the six,” said Sam. “Seems Ol’ Dad Underwood never went to Missoury with Jim Berry. Anyway, they never got him.”
“I told you we’d better hit for South America!” complained Jack Davis, whose bump of discretion seems to have been well-developed. “’Tain’t too late now. Let’s high-tail it, Sam. We can’t buck all this.”