West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels

by James Reasoner

  Jackson shrugged. "I didn’t hear how much, but so far they’ve gotten away. Hell, it doesn’t matter. I’ll bet there’s plenty more to be had on other trains."

  Sam nodded. "That’s for sure. Are you interested in maybe taking one on?"

  Jackson smiled. "Hell, yes, I’d like to!"

  Henry Underwood spoke up, voicing his intention to join the others. "Count me in."

  Hardenson Murphy stood. "That’s damned fool talk, Sam. You might have snookered those looking for you up in Nebraska and Kansas, but just wait and see if those that robbed the Allen Station train don’t end up getting caught. The law won’t put up with train robbery in Texas."

  Sam just smiled, feeling as though he had been challenged. "I guess we’ll see. Anyway it’s something to think on."

  Murphy, seemingly disgusted, turned and walked away.

  "Don’t pay him any mind, Sam," Frank Jackson said. "He’ll think on it and come back. He worries too much and thinks he knows it all because he’s older than we are. But do you think we could really rob a train and get away like you did?"

  Sam nodded. "Yeah, I do. The holding up of the train was easier than I thought it would be. It was staying out of the posse’s way that caused some anxious moments. I wondered about things just like Hardenson is doing. But Joel, our leader, he was the one that come up with the idea, said we wouldn’t know if it could be done until we tried. Joel did all the planning but he ain’t here no more. So I reckon I would have to be the one to study this thing out before a job could be done, that’s if we ever decide to do it."

  * * *

  It was well into January by the time Hardenson Murphy had decided to rejoin his beer drinking buddies. He came into the Red Horse Saloon, bought himself a mug of beer and then walked over to the table where Sam and Frank sat. Henry Underwood was away visiting relatives.

  "I’d like to think that what you’ve been talking about can be done," Murphy said as he took a seat. "I won’t stand in your way but I’m not of a mind to ride with you."

  Frank grinned while giving Sam a knowing glance.

  Sam took another long draw on his beer, wiping the foam away with the back of his hand. "We’re going to need a base camp, a hideout when the law starts looking."

  It was Murphy who spoke up after a long silence from the others. "There’s a good spot in a canyon up near my place on Clear Creek. You can ride right past my place to get to it, we call it Cove Hollow. Nobody ever goes in there. The brush is too thick and the woods are full of rattlesnakes."

  "Sounds like a good spot," Sam said. "I know some about that country north of here from my freighting days. I recall there being a lot of brushy hillsides. Can we ride out there and take a close look tomorrow?"

  Hardenson Murphy nodded in agreement.

  The next morning they toured Cove Hollow and gave the spot Hardenson had selected a seal of approval.

  A few days later Sam and Frank Jackson sat at a table in the Red Horse Saloon. "It’s time we get into action," Sam said. "When you get off work tomorrow, let’s ride down to Dallas." Jackson didn’t argue.

  The next night Sam and Frank Jackson rode to the outskirts of Dallas. Less than three miles out they stopped a Dallas-bound stage, forced the passengers to disembark and demanded cash. They got forty-three dollars for their effort. It was reminiscent of the miserable showing that Sam, Joel and the others had netted from robbing the stages near Deadwood.

  Sam was not to be deterred. Two nights later he and Jackson held up another Dallas-bound stage and took in four hundred dollars. The passengers had been slow in coming out of the stage and secreted away more valuables than they forked over. One man stuffed the bulk of his cash into a glove, which he left on the seat when he climbed out. The two bandits didn’t do a search. Sam remembered his experiences at stage robbing and considered them minor episodes but he seemed satisfied that the robberies had been a good training ground for Frank Jackson and at least they got a little cash which elated Jackson to the point he quit his town job.

  The next few days Sam and Frank worked on making their new hideout livable, pulling firewood out of a draw with their horses and cutting and dragging in new timber to be used as poles for a corral. They also spent time riding the surrounding hillsides searching out escape routes if flight became necessary. Night would find the pair back in Denton at the Red Horse Saloon.

  After two weeks had passed, Sam was becoming anxious over Henry Underwood’s absence from the group. Sam was ready to prove he could be as good a leader as Joel Collins had been and was ready to step up to a higher payoff. Robbing stages provided only a small return whereas the concept of robbing a train that held untold riches was heavy on his mind. The results had been good in Big Springs, he mused, and there is no reason it won’t work out here in Texas.

  Sam made his intentions known to Frank. "I think it’s time to hit a train. I’ve got our water station picked out and I’m going down there tomorrow to look around. Henry’s gone and we don’t know when he’ll be back, but I think we should get going on this. Trouble is, I just know we ought to have another man along and Hardenson won’t ride with us. I had a talk with Seaborn Barnes last night," he continued. "He’s kind of rough when he gets in a fight but he might be a good one to ride with us."

  Frank knew of Seaborn Barnes’ reputation, he was not just rough, the man was known to be downright vicious when it came to brawling. But Frank didn’t question Sam’s decision of bringing in the extra gun. A tough hombre might be good to have along in order to keep the train people calmed.

  Lady luck’s wheel of fortune had dealt a deadly card to Sam, a card that Sam was now forced to play. He recruited Seaborn Barnes.

  * * *

  On March 18, Sam, Frank Jackson and Seaborn Barnes rode their horses south to the water station Sam had picked out at Hutchins, south of Dallas. There was no station attendant, or a station for that matter, just a water tower.

  No station attendant was needed. The engineer of the train knew when to slow down by the signs strung out along the track that measured his approach. Once positioned to receive the water, it usually took about ten minutes to fill the train’s cavernous holding tanks before leaving.

  It was a star-lit evening when the three watched as the engine approached. puffing balls of steam and cinders as it slowed.

  Sam stepped right into his leadership role. "Frank, it’ll be up to you to cover the engineer. Keep him from doing anything until we’re done. Seaborn and I will hit the express car. I don’t want to mess with the passengers, we don’t have enough manpower to do that."

  When the engine came to a stop, Sam trained his six-gun on one side of the engine cab while Frank Jackson entered from the other. After seeing that Frank had the engineer and fireman covered, Sam ran down the track to give Seaborn a hand with the express car. He placed a hand on the man’s shoulder, then motioned Seaborn to move away from the sliding door. Sam then positioned himself on the other side of the door. He banged on the heavy planks with the barrel of his six-gun. "Open up in there!"

  "What do you want?" an excited voice called out from inside the car.

  "Open up or I’ll build a fire under the car and burn you out!" Sam ordered.

  "Just a minute," the voice said.

  Seaborn didn’t want to wait so he pumped three shots into the door. "Open up, damn you!" he roared.

  As the door began to slide open, the express messenger, six-gun in hand, began shooting through the narrow opening. He didn’t take the time to aim his shots but kept pulling the trigger until the gun was empty. Sam peeked around the corner of the door into the lighted interior and fired three quick shots near the man’s feet. The messenger dropped his six-gun and held his up his hands.

  Sam looked over to Seaborn. "Keep watch," he ordered, and then hoisted himself up into the car. "No sense you getting shot over this," he told the messenger, a short, pudgy man with saucer-like eyes. "Now be a good man and open the safe."

  "It’s not locked," the man sai
d.

  Sam shook a flour sack open. He dumped a bundle of cash amounting to three thousand dollars from the safe into the sack. There were no coins or jewelry. Seaborn stood by the open door with his six-gun trained on the messenger while Sam ransacked the car in hope of finding other valuables, like those that had been found in Big Springs. But it was not to be. He was unaware that before the shooting began, the messenger had stashed a bag with fifteen thousand dollars in cash into the cold stove fire box.

  Satisfied they had all the loot, Sam made the messenger lie down then took the man’s six-gun and a nearby shotgun and flung them out the door. "Lie there for five minutes and you won’t get hurt," he told the man. Sam jumped from the car. The three bandits disappeared into the night.

  When word of the robbery got back to Denton, Sheriff Egan went into action. He had been suspicious of Sam’s activities since his return. Egan went around town checking and sure enough Sam hadn’t been seen for two days. His known close companion Frank Jackson was nowhere to be found either. Upon questioning some local merchants and bartenders Egan found that Sam had been passing newly minted twenty dollar gold pieces as payment. A few spot checks indicated that the coins all had the same mint date of 1877 on them. The money alone convinced Egan that Sam was one of the fugitives of the Big Springs robbery.

  Sam had the audacity to convince everyone he had made a big gold mine strike. "He made a big strike all right!" Egan muttered. "Well, he won’t get away with it, not this time. I’ll find him!" He was angry for allowing Sam to make a fool of him and the entire town.

  Sheriff Egan set about to form a posse to hunt Sam Bass down. He addressed a group of men, filling them in on what he felt they needed to know. "The reward of ten thousand dollars for the capture of any of the men who robbed the express car up in Big Springs, Nebraska is still offered by the Union Pacific Railroad. I am certain that Sam Bass is one of those men. There was a train robbery south of Dallas, just last night, and I believe it was done by Bass and others."

  * * *

  Sam, Frank and Seaborn didn’t waste any time splitting the loot three ways the night of the robbery, and had brazenly ridden to a Fort Worth Saloon and spent plenty of money celebrating. A day later they rode back to the camp in Cove Hollow.

  Meanwhile, the absent Henry Underwood and a man called Arkansas Johnson had ridden into Denton. Back in December Underwood had traveled to Nebraska to visit relatives and had been picked up by a posse because his description was similar to that of Tom Nixon, who was one of the Big Springs bandits. Underwood had been lodged in a jail in Nebraska. The case and the security at the jail were flimsy. Underwood and fellow inmate Arkansas Johnson, a tough as nails man with a reputation of having a fast gun hand, had easily escaped. The two fugitives had stolen some horses and spent the next two weeks riding hard for Texas.

  Henry had spoken to Arkansas Johnson about Sam’s part in the robbery at Big Springs and of the talk of robbing a train in Texas. They were both eager to get in on the action. When the bartender at the Red Horse Saloon said that he hadn’t seen Sam Bass, Frank Jackson or Hardenson Murphy the past two nights, Henry Underwood knew that something was up. Afternoon the next day he and Arkansas Johnson rode to the Murphy cabin on Clear Creek and soon learned where the new outlaw camp was located.

  The gang’s membership had increased. It didn’t take long for Frank Jackson to tell the two new arrivals of the heist of the train and the payoff. "It was the easiest damned money I ever made!" he exclaimed.

  Sam wasn’t quite as ecstatic as Jackson. He mimicked some of Joel Collins' words: "What we got on that raid is chicken feed compared to what could have been in that express car!"

  He was emboldened by the robbery, though, and assured the others that the next one would pay even better. He coerced the gang to stick up a Texas Pacific train at Eagle Ford six miles from Dallas on April 4th but didn’t get much for loot. The safe was empty so they took the pocket money of the messenger and engineer before leaving.

  On April 10 the gang struck again at Mesquite. This time the express messenger refused to surrender and open the express car door. Again Sam Bass had to threaten to burn the car with him inside if he didn’t do as he was told. After a while the messenger relented and let the bandits in but there was hardly any money in the safe, a mere one hundred fifty dollars. If any thought had been given to getting into the passenger coaches, it was dispelled when the conductor and a host of passengers began shooting through the windows at the bandits. One bullet nipped both of Seaborn Barnes’ legs and two other bullets grazed his side and one arm but no one else was touched. A hail of bullets from the robber’s six-guns riddled the coaches and wounded several passengers. Bass called the raid off and the men scrambled for their horses and retreated.

  A public protest over the number of train robberies and other lawlessness in northern Texas was brought to the attention of Governor Richard B. Hubbard. The governor reacted right away. In an arranged meeting he commissioned thirty-three year old Junius Peak to the position of Captain in the Texas Rangers. He wanted Peak to raise a special Texas Ranger detachment and bring the train robbing bandits to justice. Junius Peak had served in the Confederate Army and was elected to a four year term as City Marshall of Dallas in 1874, a position he held until sent for by Governor Hubbard.

  "You want me to bring in Sam Bass?" Peak asked.

  Governor Hubbard put his cigar onto an ashtray on his desk. "Everyone is fed up with Sam Bass and his gang of miscreants. They have robbed too damned many trains. People have had the piss scared out of them. They are tired of it all. The robbery at Mesquite was the last straw, some of the passengers were injured." He hesitated for only a moment before continuing, his voice lowering. "Yes, I want you to bring him in, under his own power or dead and slung over the back of a horse! I really don’t care which! And the same goes for any one of his associates."

  Thoughtful, Captain Peak scrubbed a weary hand across his chin. "I think you’ve made your feelings quite clear, Governor."

  "Can you do it?" Hubbard asked.

  Captain Peak nodded. "Yes, sir, I can. With a full company of Rangers at my disposal, we will run him into ground. And, one way or the other, we will bring him in."

  The Governor stood and stuck out his hand. "We’re counting on you to do this, Captain Peak."

  Peak and a complement of Rangers combed the Dallas and Fort Worth area setting up watchful eyes on several watering stations. When nothing occurred, he decided to go north to Denton, Sam Bass’ original haunt and one of the last places where he had been seen with his friends. Peak hoped for word regarding Sam’s current whereabouts that would lead him to the bandit’s gang and ultimate capture.

  On April 25th, after a conference with Sheriff Egan, Captain Peak and his Rangers -- along with Egan’s posse that numbered well over fifty men -- took up positions in Cove Hollow where they had discovered the bandits were hiding.

  It was slow going for the lawmen as they wrestled their way beneath a waning moon through the brush-filled hillsides, a nighttime trip made necessary by the goal of reaching the camp by daylight. By an earlier agreement, Peak and his Rangers waited on one side of the canyon while Egan and his posse converged on the other.

  Egan’s men had brush-scratched faces and red-rimmed eyes from their all night traveling. They were tired and wanted coffee and breakfast and were in no mood to do anything but get their guns trained on the bandits. Egan wanted the group to close in on the robbers’ camp as one body, but someone in the posse took a shot at one of the bandits who was caught relieving himself. The shot missed the target but woke everyone up to what was happening in both the bandit camp and the assembled posse men. Chaos soon ensued on both sides.

  Sam and the other bandits zeroed in on the posses' positions and sent a hail of lead in that direction. There was no order of command as the lawmen hugged the ground and fired blindly in the general direction of the bandits.

  "How many you figure is out there?" Henry Underwood asked while
taking up a position behind a tree.

  "I don’t know," Sam said, "but from the firepower it sure looks like a lot!"

  Arkansas Johnson fired a rifle shot toward the lawmen. "We ought to get the horses and ride like hell to Mexico !"

  Regardless of the outburst by Johnson over the trouble at hand, Sam did not want to show any kind of weakness to the others. "I’m not ready to do that!" he shouted. "Let’s just see how this plays out!"

  Sam and the others could see there was great confusion among their attackers since the bullets fired in their direction were splattering impotently against the rocky terrain well at their backs and far above them. "Hell, they’re just shooting to make noise," Sam declared with great bravado. "Let’s get the horses and move on out." The gang took advantage of the situation and broke free of their position. Sam led the way out and was able to lead their escape into the heavy timber and brush of the canyon hillside. The firing continued long after they had ridden away, indicating that the posse and the Rangers were in a battle among themselves, shooting at anything they thought had moved.

  When the shooting finally died off, Sheriff Egan found an empty bandit camp. Fortunately no one in the confused assembly had taken a bullet.

  Captain Peak and his Rangers were on the other side of the canyon waiting in vain. Afterwards the Rangers and Egan’s men came together to scour the bandit camp but they discovered there was nothing there except the bandits' abandoned supplies. Some of the men raided the goods and made coffee and then cooked breakfast. Later, somewhat bewildered by the fruitless events, the lawmen left Cove Hollow canyon.

  Sam and the others found vantage points to lounge about while watching until satisfied that all the lawmen had all gone away. When they figured it to be safe, the gang rode down to Hardenson Murphy’s cabin on Clear Creek and set up a watch. They wrongfully assumed that the posse had given up and would not be back anytime soon. It was but four days later when Frank Jackson, who was on lookout duty, spotted unnatural movement in the brush and trees on the other side of Clear Creek. When he advised Sam and the others, Hardenson Murphy spoke up in objection. "I don’t need my cabin shot full of holes and the stock I got killed off!"