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He
was only 27 years old when he met his maker, but during his short life he became
the subject of cowboy songs and tall tales which were told around many a campfire
in Texas.
According to The Handbook of
Texas, Sam Bass was born on a farm near Mitchell, Indiana, on July 21, 1851.
He was orphaned before the age of thirteen and spent several years being raised
by his uncle. After running away from home in 1869, Bass turned up in Rosedale,
Mississippi, where he worked for about a year in a sawmill.
But the young
man didn’t care much for the hard work of a sawmill and decided to search for
fame and fortune in the cattle country of Texas.
He came to Denton
and worked on a ranch for a while, but once again he didn’t like the work and
his dreams of being a cowboy were soon replaced with ideas of how to make “easy
money.”
In 1874 Bass got into horse racing. He bought a fast mount dubbed
the “Denton Mare” and started racing in North
Texas, winning a little money in that part of the country; eventually he tried
his luck in San Antonio where he
wasn’t quite as successful. In 1876 he teamed up with a fellow named Joel Collins
and drove some cattle herds up to Dodge City.
Although they were employed
by several Texas ranchers and were supposed to sell the cattle and return with
the money, it didn’t work out that way. Fact is, Bass and Collins kept the money,
$8,000 worth, and squandered it gambling in Ogallala, Nebraska, and in the gold
mining city of Deadwood, South Dakota.
When the money played out the duo
tried their luck in the freight-hauling business, but as was their habit with
any job where hard work was involved, they simply quit and went back to a life
of crime. They gathered up six more unscrupulous characters and began to rob stagecoaches
and trains.
Bass and his gang made their biggest haul when they robbed
a Union Pacific passenger train at Big Springs, Nebraska, on Sept. 18, 1877. They
took $60,000 in newly minted twenty-dollar gold pieces from the express car and
$1,300 plus four gold watches from the passengers. The crooks divided up the loot
and decided to go in pairs in different directions. Collins and several others
were killed while resisting arrest but Bass made it back to Texas
and put together a new gang of outlaws. Sam Bass and his bandits didn’t have much
success in Texas. They did rob some stagecoaches
and trains in the Dallas area but didn’t
get much money. During his short-lived career, Bass got sort of a “Robin Hood”
reputation in that he claimed to have only robbed the rich and never the poor.
Many
a tall tale has been told about the Texas outlaw. On April 4, 1924, The Moulton
Eagle ran an article about him and cited several different tales that were
circulating about the man. For instance there was that time when he offered one
young boy a drink of whiskey. The boy refused it saying, “Mother doesn’t allow
me to drink.” The outlaw sadly answered, “That’s right sonny, mind your ma. I
wouldn’t be where I am today if I had minded mine.”
Perhaps the biggest
tale about Bass is the one where he was captured by a mob and hanged. The men
were shooting at his body and a bullet happened to hit the rope. His body dropped
and then rolled into a river. A big rattlesnake was seen crawling away from where
Sam’s body hit the ground. The lynch mob supposedly dragged the river and found
nothing.
After returning to town one member of the mob was asked if the
notorious Sam Bass was really dead. “Well if he isn’t, he ought to be,” said the
man. “He was shot, hanged, snake-bit and drowned. That ought be enough.” Whether
this really happened or not is anybody’s guess but Bass did survive, although
not for long. Given up by an informer, Sam Bass was ambushed and wounded in a
gunfight with Texas Rangers while trying to rob a bank in Round
Rock, Texas. He managed to escape but was later found in a pasture north of
town. He was brought back to Round
Rock and died there on July 21, 1878, his twenty-seventh birthday. The young
outlaw who inspired many a song and campfire yarn is buried in Round
Rock, not far from where he died.
© Murray Montgomery August
24 , 2009 Column
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