“Ah, what’s to be scared of?” scoffed Sam, those large white teeth showing in his famous grin. “Don’t I know this-here country like the palm o’ my hand? Don’t be losin’ your nerve, Jack! We’ll just stick here an’ be damned to ’em to catch us.”
But Jack Davis was beyond persuasion. He never had thought such a hornets’ nest would be aroused by that U. P. robbery. While planning it, Collins had stressed the large chance of their never being recognized. To be “on the dodge” in the face of such widespread and earnest search broke Davis’ nerve. So from the elm-bottoms outside of Denton, Jack Davis rode hell-for-leather; rode out of the picture entirely. Whether he made South America, or started afresh under another name in the States there is no authentic report. But certain it is that neither he nor Old Dad Underwood ever paid the penalty, officially, for the crime.
Sam Bass, who had left Denton that spring a likable, bull-headed, but honest cowboy, came home a famous outlaw, fit to mention with Jesse James and the Youngers. Nor did he lack apologists. Texas had always held itself somewhat aloof from national affairs; what a man did elsewhere seldom worried the Texans, so long as he obeyed the code in their midst.
Now it was complained that Texan authorities were pulling Nebraska chestnuts from what might well be a hot fire; that Sam Bass was being persecuted in this state when he had committed no crime whatsoever against the sovereignty of Texas.
Meanwhile, moving through the well-known county with a surety, a prescience, almost, that baffled his pursuers, Sam Bass gained a following. Attracted by his reputation—perhaps by thought of that not-yet-spent ten thousand in shiny gold-pieces of ’77—men appeared unobtrusively in the elm-bottoms.
So came Henry Underwood, with Arkansas Johnson, Sebe Barnes, Jim Murphy, young Frank Jackson, Pipes Herndon; later, two or three others not so well known joined the gang. Daring, dangerous men, some of these, men with records as gun-fighters, as hard characters when “on the prod.” But Sam Bass was their undisputed leader.
Not long could such a group be content to ride into the little hamlets of Denton and Dallas and Tarrant Counties, to “belly up to the bar” and amuse themselves with occupations so mild as the mere downing of Old Jordan and shooting at marks—in or out of the saloons—and talking of past doings. The logical thought came to Bass that he could be hunted no more than he was. He had committed no crime in Texas, yet Texan officers chased him. He had the name; it would cost him little or nothing to get the game.
The gang’s first job was the robbery of a Texas and Pacific train at Eagle Ford, some seven miles west of Dallas. It was a simple job to stop the train near the sleepy little farming village and go through it. Thereafter, two or three similar robberies were executed with no features particularly interesting. Considering the numbers in Sam Bass’ gang, the profit was small, averaging perhaps five hundred dollars per man in each robbery. It is not his train-robberies which give the interest to the career of Sam Bass upon which his tradition rests, but the masterly fashion in which for months he tied sheriffs’ posses and Texas Rangers into knots.
