CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Knights of the Road

 

            In the early days, stage-robbing was one of the most active industries on the east side of the Sierra Nevada. Not exactly a legitimate business, still it was looked on with easy tolerance even by leading citizens.

            Strange stories were whispered as to some of those worthies. The stage company had to make good any loss, and on more than one occasion merchants were suspected of having tipped off their friends -- the road agents -- when they were going to send large amounts of coin by Wells-Fargo's stages through the mountains or across the desert. The holdups came off as scheduled, and the crooked merchants divided the profits with their allies.

            The profits were high and the risk, while great, not as big as it would have been without friendly juries. The identity of many of the foremost knights of the road was well known in the communities in which they moved, but the difficulty was to secure convicting evidence against them if and when they came to trial.

            Risk for the road agents became greater when the express company placed "messengers" on the stages to defend the property they were carrying. These shotgun messengers at one time were instructed to carry their guns with their muzzles resting on their toes -- they did not dare fall asleep! One- legged shotgun messengers were scarce as one-armed stage drivers. Not that there were not some of these, either.

143

144 An Editor on the Comstock Lode

            I used to know a stage-owner named Preston whose wagons were stopped so many times up in Montana that Wells-Fargo threatened to take their business away from him and start an opposition line. This made him so angry that he called his drivers together and told them that they were a pack of cowards, and said he'd like to see anybody stop him. That was before shotgun messengers were common and every driver was supposed to look out for himself. Preston said he intended to drive the mountain section of the line himself for a while and they'd see how easy it was for a man with sand in his craw to stand off the road agents.

            That night he made his word good. He drove out of Helena in an old-fashioned mud-wagon, with a shotgun resting across his lap and two passengers in behind.

            About seven hours later one of the passengers drove the wagon back to town. The money-box was gone and Preston was lying in the bottom of the wagon with both of his hands literally shot off at the wrist. He refused to throw up his hands when told to. The last time I saw Preston he had two brand-new wooden hands, with black kid gloves on them. They looked well enough, but were not good for much except dress parade.

            When the messengers went on the box, some of the road agents turned their activities elsewhere. One of the most notorious, Big Jack Davis, decided on a bold stroke: he and his masked gang held up a Central Pacific express train near Verdi, a few miles west of Reno, and escaped with $40,000, yielded by the strong box of Wells, Fargo & Company. Sam Davis always insisted this was the first train-holdup in history. It won Davis nationwide notoriety. (Jack I mean, not Sam -- they were no relation.)

            In the penitentiary Jack pleaded as his excuse that he became

Knights of the Road 145

crazy for want of money to work his mine. He sought to levy other assessments on the public, for when he was at large, about seven years after the Verdi robbery, he and two pals made a bold attempt to rob the Eureka and Tybo stage at Willows station, forty miles south of Eureka. The three desperadoes one evening captured the station, tied up the hostler, and lay in wait for the stage. As it drove up they cried out to Jimmy Blair and Eugene Brown, the express messengers, demanding surrender. Blair jumped to the ground, and as he reached it received the fire of two shotguns. He replied to the fire, grappling with one of the robbers, while Brown, who had stayed on the box, planted a charge of buckshot in the fellow's back. Brown was wounded in the leg by a pistol bullet from one of the highwaymen at the rear of the stage. The fire was returned, and the pair of bandits still able to ride threw themselves on their horses and streaked off into the sage, making good their escape. The wounded robber was Jack Davis, and he died on the road into Eureka. He was buried in the county graveyard, and not a mourner attended his funeral. In appearance, Davis was meek and placid; he might have been taken for a professor or a clergyman.

            Bullion from the Comstock mines was often carried out by big six-horse teams. Mackay and Fair sent out every night such a team with all the bullion it could draw -- this particular bullion being about 55% gold and 45% silver. Small bars had been used in earlier days, but the mine owners by the mid-'70s were sending it out in big bars such as a man could hardly lift. This made it difficult for the road agents to get away with the treasure, and many of the sports on the Comstock felt that the stratagem amounted almost to a swindle of the stage robbers who, in this instance, had the sympathy of the public.

            A desperate fellow named Clement Lee blew into Virginia

146 An Editor on the Comstock Lode

City with three companions -- no one knew much about them and they started a big faro layout. The establishment was well supplied with money; like as not, it had been won at the point of shotguns somewhere far off in the sage.

            Not content with the big rake-off at their faro joint, the quartet of sharpers soon set out for bigger stakes. The custom then was to close up the games at high twelve on Saturday night. They closed duly when the clock behind the bar in the adjoining saloon showed "hands up," and they made sure that they were seen by the loungers in the place. Then they crept below, where horses were tethered, and spurred hotfoot down the Geiger Grade in the dark. They rode at a terrific pace through Dead Man's Gulch, where a slip on one of the turns would have hurled horse and rider to eternity. But their time had not come, and they made the distance to the valley below faster than it had ever been covered. There they had four fresh horses staked out in a grove of cottonwoods. They shifted saddles to the new mounts, threw some drinks into their own thirsty throats, and then started off again into the starlit night, pulling up finally on the road at a bend they knew well, a couple of miles from Reno, on the route to Honey Lake.

            They had calculated their schedule to a nicety. Soon the Reno stage came careening through the night, its six horses making it spin along at a great rate. The four bandits sprang into the road; Clem Lee cried to the driver to stop, but so fast were the horses going that he could not pull up short (some say he didn't try, but whipped them up instead) and Clem had barely time to spring aside to avoid the coach. As it was, one of the wheels grazed the light overcoat he was wearing, and ground into it a long yellow mark. Clem shot one of the foremost horses as he turned, and the others piled up on the body of their dead leader.

Knights of the Road 147

            The stage was stopped, but a deputy sheriff on the box had pulled a gun and sent a bullet through Clem's partner, Dick, killing him instantly. The sheriff was rudely disarmed, and as the passengers were ordered out and ranged in line, Thomas, the driver, threw down the box. While the plunder was being gathered, one of the robbers went up to the sheriff and threatened to kill him, but Clem Lee prevented that. He ordered all the victims back into the stage, and waved it on its way with his menacing gun.

            The three gamblers buried their dead partner hurriedly in a grave scooped amidst the sage; mounted their horses, dashed back to the cottonwoods, changed horses and spurred up the Geiger Grade to Virginia City and were in bed before nine o'clock in the morning. Nobody would suspect them, they felt assured, for even if their absence was observed, it would be thought impossible for them to have made the trip to and from the scene of the holdup. They could not have done it without the relays of horses, and then only by galloping like mad.

            One seemingly insignificant detail gave them away. A woman passenger had looked out with startled gaze when the command came to halt, and had seen the wheel graze the pistol-arm of Clem Lee as he sprang aside. "Look for a man with a wheel-mark burned into the right sleeve of his light overcoat," she had said, "no brush ever made could take that out!"

            So on C street in Virginia, when a young man of the town came strolling along in a light overcoat, the police looked for the telltale mark. It was there, and he was apprehended. He protested and proved his innocence; but his coat, he said, had been lent to Clem Lee that night. Clem and his companions,

148 An Editor on the Comstock Lode

one of them the wayward son of a Washington millionaire, were arrested and sent to prison.

            The knights of the road were no respecters of persons. Hank Monk, the most famous stage-driver in the country, was stopped just like the rest.

            One lone highwayman, recalling perhaps the Boston Tea-Party, had his face painted red like an Indian when he stopped a stage up Bodie way, but it was in excellent English that he ordered the driver to throw out the strongbox.

            Speaking of holdups, I call to mind a catchy bit of frontier balladry called Baldy Green, which used to be the most popular song on the Comstock. Charley Reed's Chicken Tamale and Daniels' Razzle Dazzle couldn't compare.

            K. B. Brown used to laugh and stamp his feet when he heard Charley Rhoades play the banjo and sing it. "Everybody stamped their feet in those days," explained "K. B." in reminiscent strain. "That was before the dudes had introduced the custom of clapping. You can bet your life that anybody would have been tarred and feathered or ridden out of town on a rail just as quickly for clapping his hands as he would for wearing a swallow-tail coat. Old Judge Mesick and Jonas Seely and Colonel Bob Taylor and Jase Baldwin and Rollin Daggett, all used to sit together in John Piper's old Opera House, and whenever Rhoades would come out and sing Baldy Green they'd hit on the benches in front of them with their six-shooters and call 'Bully !' until Piper would try to give them back their money to get them to stop.

            "I'll always believe that Rhoades wrote Baldy Green himself, though I understand Hank Donnelly, Superintendent of the Eureka Con. mine tried to prove that Alf Doten did. The way the song came to be written was that Wells-Fargo's stages were being robbed nearly every day, just as if Milton Sharp or

Knights of the Road 149

Black Bart had been there, and their high-toned driver, Baldy Green, seemed to be the favorite with the road agents. Anyway, they stopped him oftener than any of the others.

            Some suspicious people used to say that Baldy was in with the play and gave the boys the right tip, but that was all josh. Everybody who knew Baldy protested that it wasn't so, but it made him madder to tell it on him than if it really was true.

            One of the exciting events in Baldy's much-interrupted career is immortalized in the song:

BALDY GREEN

 

I'll tell you all a story,

And I'll tell it in a song

And I hope that it will please you,

For it won't detain you long;

'Tis about one of the old boys

So gallus and so fine,

Who used to carry mails

On the Pioneer Line.

 

He was the greatest favor-ite

That ever yet was seen,

He was known about Virginny

By the name of Baldy Green.

Oh, he swung a whip so gracefully,

For he was bound to shine

For he was a high-toned driver

On the Pioneer Line.

 

Now, as he was driving out one night,

As lively as a coon,

He saw three men jump in the road

By the pale light of the moon;

Two sprang for the leaders,

While one his shotgun cocks,

Saying, "Baldy, we hate to trouble you,

But just pass us out the box."

150 An Editor on the Comstock Lode

When Baldy heard them say these words

He opened wide his eyes;

He didn't know what in the world to do,

For it took him by surprise.

Then he reached into the boot,

Saying, "Take it, sirs, with pleasure,"

So out into the middle of the road

Went Wells & Fargo's treasure.

 

Now, when they got the treasure-box

They seemed quite satisfied,

For the man who held the leaders

Then politely stepped aside,

Saying, "Baldy, we've got what we want,

So drive along your team,"

And he made the quickest time

To Silver City ever seen.

 

Don't say greenbacks to Baldy now,

It makes him feel so sore;

He'd traveled the road many a time,

But was never stopped before.

Oh, the chances they were three to one

And shotguns were the game,

And if you'd a-been in Baldy's place

You'd a-shelled her out the same.

            The passage, "He made the quickest time to Silver City ever seen," was sung very rapidly, and you must understand that the line in the song about Baldy never being stopped before was sarcasm. That's what hurt him.

            Poor Baldy! He had hard luck in his latter day. He got to be a common rancher out near Winnemucca, where he could see nothing but cattle, cattle, cattle, from one month's end to another. It paid, of course, but just think what a let-down it was. And that wasn't all. The last time I heard of Baldy he was a Justice of the Peace, and they were threatening to send him to the Legislature.