A Western Sheriff - Part 3

(Cont. from last week)

Seth Bullock was Typical Frontier Officer of the Law; Was Close Friend of Roosevelt

Hold-Up of “Treasure Coach”

One day the road agents held up and robbed an armored treasure coach, which had been named “Johnnie Slaughter,” in honor of a driver who had previously been shot and killed in a holdup near Deadwood. The armored coach was in charge of five picked men with Scott Davis of Denver, Colo., chief messenger, in charge. The stage drove up, as usual, to the stage station at Cold Springs, to change horses. The coach was brought to a stop and the driver threw the reins to the ground. The men inside the vehicle were preparing to dismount and enter the stage station, when, suddenly, from the door of the building came the report of firearms and a deadly hail of bullets rained upon the coach. Campbell, a telegraph operator, was killed; Gale Hill a coach guard was badly wounded.

Scott Davis, chief messenger, jumped to the ground on the opposite side of the coach from where the bandits were standing. He took to cover under the heavy timber in the immediate vicinity and opened fire on the five men who held up the coach.
The bandits, having captured “Big Gene,” the driver, placed him in front of them as protection and compelled him to walk toward the spot where Davis was concealed, and when within hailing distance, prevailed upon him to cease firing, the bandits threatening to kill the driver in the event that he did not.

Realizing that the life of the driver was at stake, Davis ceased, and, although he had been severely wounded by the first volley from the bandits’ guns, at once started for the nearest station for assistance. After Davis had ceased firing, the four unwounded road agents compelled the driver to break open the treasure box with a pickaxe. During this procedure and until the departure of the desperadoes with the $45,000 in gold dust, which the box had contained, one of the guards was stretched at full length in the bottom of the coach, pretending to be dead. He secured information which proved valuable when the pursuit of the robbers was commenced.

When they had ransacked the treasure box, the bandits, after first pinioning the driver to a wheel of the coach, mounted their horses and departed, leaving their wounded comrade lying where he had fallen when struck by the bullet fired by Scott Davis.

Bullock Pursues Bandits

Seth Bullock, and his deputies, when informed of the holdup, took the trial of the road agents and followed it until nearly all of the robbers were captured and most of the stolen gold recovered. So persistent were the officers that one of the fugitives was trailed the entire distance to Missouri Valley, Iowa, and captured.

Bullock’s friendship with Theodore Roosevelt dated back to the time when Mr. Roosevelt first appeared on the plains of the Northwest as a tenderfoot, and it continued until the time of the former president’s death. They hunted together and worked side by side, and Bullock was a frequent visitor at the White House while Mr. Roosevelt was its occupant.
Bluffs Political Opposition

During the campaign of 1900 Bullock accompanied Mr. Roosevelt on a northwestern speaking tour. It had been reported that the opposition planned to break up the Deadwood meeting.

“Don’t worry,” said Bullock to the presidential candidate. “Leave that to me; I’ll fix ‘em.” - and he did.
On the afternoon before the meeting he passed around the word in Deadwood that he would sit on the platform with Mr. Roosevelt that evening armed with his six shooters and that he would kill any person who made a disturbance. There was no disturbance.

Arrests 40 Desperadoes

In the early days of Deadwood gulch, when that camp was one of the “toughest” of frontier settlements, Bullock was appointed sheriff. The first night of his term in this office, he personally arrested 37 bad men - carefully beating each into insensibility with the “butt end of his gun,” before he made the arrest. Three of the desperadoes escaped and “holed up” in a deserted mine not far from camp. Bullock sat over the mouth with a rifle, while he sent a messenger to a Chinese laundry and borrowed the makings of an old-fashioned fumigatory affair. He set this deadly Oriental weapon afire, lowered it into the mine, and in short time these bandits begged permission to surrender.

Bullock, the same man who was sheriff of Lewis and Clark county at the time of the bitter territorial capital fight, thus served the old frontier well. He was one of the rough-hewn characters to whom posterity is indebted for the opening up of safe trails for civilization. He was born at Sandwich, Canada, just across the river from Detroit, in 1837, and started for the western frontier as soon as he was old enough to sit upon a horse. He was a miner, prospector, peace officer and cattle rancher by turns, and died on his Deadwood ranch in October, 1919. Print this post