He survived the shock, trauma, and (that greatest killer of the war) peritonitis, and fought—in sergeant’s stripes now—at Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Kenesaw Mountain, and against the backdrop of Sherman’s Inferno in Atlanta, where he received a battlefield promotion to second lieutenant; but Lee’s surrender came faster than his bars.
Bolton little regretted it. The whole transaction was blood and sweat and drenching rain, mosquitoes the size of horseflies, horseflies the size of hummingbirds, and rats twice as big as they grew them in California. He came out of the hostilities with only a scar to show for his near-fatal injury, but chronic bad feet, the arches broken from marching and toes which, once frostbitten, froze again in a fraction of the time in temperatures half as cold; bad feet, and the determination never again to let himself get so hungry as to impair his good judgment.
He walked, corns and all, from Washington, D.C., back to Illinois, reunited with his family, and with his savings from army duty and the pittance he realized from selling his all-but-worthless farm, moved bag and baggage, wife and daughters, to New Oregon, Iowa, and a better tract of land. But the work was as hard and the profits scarcely enough to put bread on the table and clothes on their backs.
The mining bug was like yellow fever; it kept recurring just when one thought he’d put it behind. Before dawn one day in 1867, tempted by stories of silver in Montana, he packed supplies and provisions and set off on foot for Idaho, and after sinking a dry shaft there, to a camp called Silver Bow. The name was promising; the prospects were not.
Dear Lizzie [he wrote],
Your wayfarer is on his way home …
Whether he changed his mind or got confused as to his directions is not known, for he hiked west. He wrote home from time to time, which impressed unschooled prospectors, who paid him to draft letters for them. (His talents as a scribe were developing.) He sent some of this money home, but it was insufficient. His remorse drove him to seek more frequent employment, shoveling out stables and loading sacks of grain. His stop in the Mormon capital of Salt Lake City was brief: Little work was to be found by gentiles.
Sometime during this period, he fell out of the habit of sending money home. James B. Hume would make much of this later, to quell further romanticism of the “lyrical larcenist” by the ravenous press; his own victory tasted like ashes. The explanation may be less simple than common abandonment. Perhaps the decision came from shame and despair, or a comforting letter he’d received from Elizabeth (comforting, but possibly false encouragement, or a weary dismissal born of eternal waiting), saying that she’d begun to take in sewing and was earning a reputation for fine work among the discerning better class of woman in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines.
Or …
Or because his life back East had faded to resemble something he’d dreamed only, or a story related to him by a fellow Yankee waiting out a bombardment in a crater dug by a Confederate mortar. War, hardship, and loss assumed a reality apart from all others. Almost certainly, the farther Charles Bolton drifted toward the setting sun, the more vivid grew the memory of his ventures with brother David.
Whatever his motives, he sacked up his possibles once again and resumed walking until he ran clear out of continent, finding himself back in California’s Mother Lode country.
He stopped in Yerba Buena to pay his respects to Davy; but did not go from there to the fields. A reading man from youth, schooled by his English parents in Shakespeare’s sonnets, Donne’s poetry and sermons, and serializations of Dickens, his grammar, syntax, and vocabulary sharpened by his experiences in writing letters, he applied for and obtained the job of teaching grade school, first in Sierra County, then in neighboring Contra Costa. He found pleasure in the lessons he gave, but either his enthusiasm for the material was not shared by the children and grandchildren of his fellow Forty-Niners—a largely illiterate lot, as he well remembered—or he lacked the educator’s gift for translating his affection to his students. In 1875, after Decoration Day, he collected his salary and invested in a shotgun.
On July 26 of that year, a solitary gunman dressed in a linen duster and a hood made from a flour sack stepped out from behind a boulder on the Reynolds Ferry road in Calaveras County on a spot called Funk Hill, and invited the driver of a mud wagon to “Please throw down the box.”
If Wells, Fargo never forgot, neither did Black Bart.
ELEVEN
Jim Hume was a manhunter with no one to match;
nor has any arrived who can equal his catch.
Yet like Bart he eschewed the horse as his mode;
for a plain oak desk was the steed that he rode.
Two decades of farm life had palled on the man born as Charles E. Boles; so it was with his nemesis. At age twenty-three, James B. Hume left his plow standing in its furrow on his father’s farm in La Grange, Indiana, to answer the golden cry from California.
As it was with so many others—Black Bart included—his destiny was thus determined, but in the end was directed more by the labor of his wits than of his back.
In the autumn of 1850, just as the Boles brothers set their feet for the first time on the North Fork of the American River, Hume rode into a log settlement colorfully christened Hangtown, in honor of the bountiful local harvest of claim-jumpers, highwaymen, horse thieves, man-killers, and pederasts strung from trees like hops hung up to cure. Later it became Old Dry Diggings—a designation hurled back bitterly over the shoulders of busted miners on the return journey to civilization and work-for-hire—and finally Placerville; but by the time sufficient gold had been excavated to earn the more promising name, Hume was no longer looking for it. Like Fergus Callahan, Dail’s father and founder of the family dry-goods business, he’d opened a store, first to supplement his prospecting, then as a substitute to it, selling his worn-out gear and bucket of sourdough to some starry-eyed greenhorn and investing the proceeds in genuine glass windows and a broader selection of merchandise.
It was in this phase of his life that Hume developed the practice of keeping elaborate records. Not being one to turn his face from unpleasant fact, he faithfully logged each debit as it was incurred, deducted the amount from the figures in black, noted the difference (frequently preceded by a minus) at the bottom of each page, and set down the grim total at the end of the month. By this means he determined down to the date how much longer he could remain in business.
That date was the last Saturday in December 1854, when he sold the last of his fixtures at auction and signed over the deed to the lot his log store stood on to a newcomer from Baltimore, who’d made the trip west not to mine, but to speculate in real property, and needed the building for his office. The transisthmian railroad was nearing completion across Panama, eliminating the necessity to sail ten thousand miles around the horn in order to reach California. He intended to be among the first to greet pilgrims using the swift new route to transplant themselves in San Francisco.
Hume reckoned the man would make a killing, but he felt no envy. He’d had his life’s portion of telling people to have a pleasant day when he himself was not, or when the person he was telling it to was someone he’d just as soon see off to hell on the Sunset Limited. In any event, he had a job, one that didn’t involve wrapping parcels in paper, binding them with string, and climbing ladders to hoist pails of lard off the top shelf. (Carpenters insisted on making more space between the top shelves than the bottom, forcing merchants to store the larger and heavier items near the ceiling; he suspected they were in league with the quacks in Chinatown you paid to jump up and down on your throbbing back; he’d not miss the place.) The prospect of nursemaiding carriageloads of tenderfeet through miles of scrubland, scouting for building sites, held no more appeal, whatever the profit.
With the population spreading like wildflowers after a rain, the El Dorado County sheriff was hard pressed to pay calls on all the landowners who owed taxes. With the anticipated new deluge of settlers by way of Panama, he was looking at more time spent in the saddle than at home with his wife an
d children. He was a fat man, but the extra upholstery didn’t bring much comfort to tenting on the old campground; and a diet of beans and bacon did little to relieve his gout. When, while ordering a sack of oats for his spavined mount, he complained of the situation to Hume, the storekeeper asked him why he didn’t delegate the chore to his deputies.
“They’d like that, sure as shit,” said the lawman. “See, I get to keep a percentage of what I collect, and I’d have to divide it up among them. I’m a family man, and new shoes don’t grow on trees.”
That was how James B. Hume came to be sworn in as deputy sheriff in charge of collecting taxes. He kept his records in such intricate detail the amounts were never questioned, and he worked solely on salary. Naturally this delighted the sheriff, who came to rely on him more than all his other deputies combined. So in 1864, when a gang of Copperheads robbed a stage at Bullion Bend in his jurisdiction, Hume led the posse that ran them to ground, took them into custody, recovered money earmarked for the Confederate war fund, and returned it to Wells, Fargo, & Co. He was promoted to under-sheriff, next in line to the most important office in the county. Four years later, he ran against his superior and was elected sheriff.
Wells, Fargo never forgets. After another four years spent tracking and shackling road agents who had preyed on Company strongboxes, Sheriff Hume received an invitation from John J. Valentine, general superintendent of operations, to meet him in the San Francisco office.
It was his first visit to the brick building with its deceptively narrow front in the city’s famed Fireproof Block. He was impressed with how much space it commanded, extending all the way to the street paralleling Montgomery; and particularly the banks of oaken file cases in all the upstairs rooms. His faith in thorough and accurate records had proven to be of more value than days and nights in the saddle or the Yellow Boy Winchester he carried in a boot when he was on the scent. (Had his overstuffed predecessor been aware of that, it was likely Hume would still be stocking tins on shelves belonging to someone else.)
The superintendent, for his part, was even more impressed with his guest. Himself a physical specimen to attract note, stout of build and elaborately bearded, with a Mason’s ring on his left little finger, Valentine greeted a tall, distinguished-looking man of erect bearing: He was groomed carefully and polite, but not to the point of seeming obsequious. Although the black felt hat he removed upon entering the room was nondescript—one might even say it was drab, at a time when men of distinction paid particular attention to their accessories—his host surmised that he wore it more to draw attention away from his physical presence than to invite it; a modest man, then, the antithesis of the strutting pistoleros in Beadle’s Dime Library of sensational fiction. Their previous encounters had been of short duration, and the superintendent preoccupied at the time with the details of specific robberies. On this occasion he’d been concerned with the Company’s public profile should it include a peacock like Wild Bill or that truculent crowd in Dodge City and Tombstone.
With his trim handlebars streaked with gray, silver watch chain, tidy dress, freshly blacked boots, and organ-pipe arrangement of cigars in a plated case in his breast pocket, Hume might have been taken for a banker or an attorney but for the badge of office pinned to his waistcoat. If he wore a revolver, it wasn’t evident. His responses to questions were equally reassuring, quiet, brief, and to the point; on matters regarding the business of convicting captives of the crimes they were charged with, he was surprisingly learned, nearly as much as the legal experts whom Wells, Fargo kept on retainer. He understood more than most of the Company’s field agents that it was one thing to catch a man red-handed, another to overcome the hurdles erected by attorneys for the defense. Compliments on his successes as a peace officer he turned away with a somewhat impatient gesture and a swift change of subject.
He was loquacious on one point only: his method of operation in regard to the plundering plague that had turned the coach roads into a Robbers Roost.
“Mind you,” opened Valentine, “I cannot have these villains slaughtered in frequent gun battles, or hanging like crepe from every tree in perdition, much as the picture appeals to me. The eastern press does not scruple between violence committed by bandits and violence committed against them. That kind of thing frightens away settlers, which disinclines investment by the great mining interests, which are butter to the Company’s bread.”
Hereupon the sheriff’s moustaches stretched at the corners; the closest thing to a smile he’d yet shown. “I believe I can assuage your hesitation on that account, sir. Give me but a flat surface and an unlimited supply of paper and ink, and I shall deliver results without unnecessary carnage. No two miscreants are the same; each leaves his mark, as personal as a footprint or a signature. Most of the arrests I helped bring about took place in saloons and bath houses, where they were traced after I and my people had gathered sufficient evidence to identify them. A thief riddled with holes and put on display at the undertaker’s is a sign of failure on the part of justice. My intention is to make that a rare event. In eight years I’ve not fired a gun except in practice.” He inclined his graying head toward the row of file cases running the length of the long wall facing the side-street. “Those are my weapons of choice. When it comes to bringing a criminal career to a close, they’re as sure as a coffin.”
That ended the interview. The superintendent had made his decision, without consulting either the Messrs. Wells or Fargo. He offered James B. Hume the position of chief of detectives in charge of investigating robberies and embezzlements perpetrated against the Company.
“In the matter of wages, I think you will find we’re at least as generous as the taxpayers of El Dorado.”
“That’s of small interest. I am a bachelor. I lack for places to spend what I earn at present.”
“Welcome aboard, Chief.” Valentine rose from behind his desk and offered his hand.
Hume stood and accepted it. “I thank you, sir. I’ll notify the county of my decision to resign.”
TWELVE
If only God can make gold shine,
and the Devil make Man to say, “It’s mine”;
it took a Bart to make Hume cry,
pierce a vein, and bleed Wells, Fargo dry.
The lumberman smelled of fresh-sawn wood and clean sweat, with a fusty finish; he’d come to Hume’s office directly after stabling his buckboard and pair in San Francisco. The ponderous lumber wagon and massive Percherons remained home in Butte County. The frock coat he wore over a flannel shirt was turned at the cuffs, and months spent interred in cedar and moth-flakes clung to it like an uncollected debt. Apart from that, the man looked prosperous enough. His face and hands were scrubbed, leaving only cross-hatchings of old dirt earned through honest labor, and his stout boots put the chief of detectives in mind of the man he’d invited the visitor in to discuss. (Baron and bandit alike knew the importance of looking after one’s feet.) The trade in California hardwood was fast approaching the market in bullion.
“You say this fellow was sitting on a rock writing. What was he writing?”
“I cannot say. I did not get that close. From his look, it might have been his last will and testament.”
“Old?”
“That; and tuckered out.”
“And you saw no horse or other transportation?”
“Not a sign.”
“Unless someone dropped him off, it might explain his condition. What else did you see?”
“An old blanket roll, which was lumpy enough to contain his belongings. Mind, I thought little of it at first, except that he was up to mischief. That stretch of country is notorious for—”
“I heard something of the sort. The robbery of the Ukiah stage took place almost a week ago. Why did you wait that long to come here, if you’re so interested in the bounty?”
“He appeared all-in, as I said, so I dismissed him as a hazard. I did not learn of the robbery until a few days later. Considering that it took place on
that very—”
“‘Gray of whiskers and hair, wrinkled face, drooping shoulders.’” Hume read from the visitor’s dictation to Thacker, his secretary. “This is far from the description of the man who held up the coach and demanded the surrender of the express box. I could take a dozen men off the top of any freight car that rolls into the city who would answer it, and turn them over to the police on a vagrancy charge.”
“I thought along the same lines, which is another reason why I did not report straightaway. There is still the matter of where I saw him.”
Hume barked an order to Thacker, sitting at the desk facing his. In moments a leather portfolio pregnant with its contents was deposited atop the heap in front of his superior. Hume patted it without reaching for the tie. “All these people are ahead of you in line,” he told the lumberman. “Tramps, odd-looking strangers, neighbors, and relatives who have offended them in some way—all of them Black Bart, to hear them tell it. If there’s a kernel of truth in one report out of a dozen, Wells and Fargo would have to divvy up the eight hundred dollars it’s offering at a mean amount of seven dollars and sixty cents per person.” He laid his cigar in its tray to smolder and stood, thrusting out his hand. “Thank you for your effort. Leave your address with my secretary, and if anything comes of it, the Company will be in touch. Wells, Fargo never forgets.”
“It never pays up, either.” The lumberman left without shaking hands or stopping at the other desk.
“Was that necessary?” asked Thacker, when they were alone. “So far he’s the only one to offer an account of anyone perched so close to the site and time of a robbery, and he saw him writing.”
“Unfortunately, the level of literacy here has improved since the days of forty-nine. We haven’t the time or space to corral every man who can string words into a sentence, even if it turns out he has a flair for verse.”
“Still, we could give the information to the press.”
The Ballad of Black Bart Page 7