Sam Bass
by Born in Mitchell, Indiana, Sam Bass left home at age 18 and headed for Texas. During his brief life, he worked as a teamster, farmer, cowboy, gambler, and robber. In 1874 he befriended Joel Collins, and two years later they trailed north on a cattle drive.
They pushed the herd all the way to Deadwood, South Dakota, where they tried their luck with a saloon, casino, and mine. Failing at all of them, they decided that robbing stagecoaches and trains would yield riches more quickly. In September 1877 their gang of six stole $65,000 in gold coin and other valuables from a Union Pacific train in Big Springs, Nebraska. Back in Texas, Bass and his new gang successfully robbed several trains. In July 1878, however, a gang member named Jim Murphy tipped off the Texas Rangers. The lawmen ambushed and wounded Bass as he tried to rob the bank in Round Rock. Ranger George Harrell is officially credited with firing the shot that eventually killed Bass.
However, Dick Ware, credited with killing outlaw Seaborn Barnes, may have actually been the one to shoot Bass. Lawman A. W. Grimes also received mortal wounds during the fight. Bass, shot through the torso, managed to escape but could not ride far. He used strips of his shirt to bind up his wounds, but a posse found him resting under a tree the next morning. He died the next day, on 21 July, his twenty-seventh birthday. His dying words are recorded thus: “Yes, I am Sam Bass, the man that has been wanted so long. It is ag’in’ my profession to blow on my pals. If a man knows anything, he ought to die with it in him” (“The Story of Sam Bass”).
Like that of many outlaws, Bass’s stature grew after his death, aided by a sense of injustice over his betrayal. A few years after his death, his sister had a tombstone erected engraved with this epitaph: “A brave man reposes in death here. Why was he not true?” Souvenir hunters chipped away the monument, which was later replaced with a granite tombstone erected by the Sam Bass Centennial Commission.
Texas and the nation still remember the fallen bank robber as “Texas’s Beloved Bandit” or “Robin Hood on a Fast Horse.” During the 1930s, a popular cowboy song, “The Ballad of Sam Bass,” by John Benton, added to his heroic legend. According to the lyrics, “a kinderhearted fellow you’d seldom ever see.”
The ballad also made plain Jim Murphy’s reward for his treachery: “What a scorchin’ Jim should get when Gabriel blows his horn.”
Old West fans still visit Bass’s grave site at the Round Rock Cemetery located in Old Town on Sam Bass Road. The town also hosts the Sam Bass Community Theatre, a nonprofit drama group, and the Sam Bass Youth Baseball League. Tiny Rosston, Texas, a supposed Bass hideout, celebrates Sam Bass Day on the third Saturday of July.
What happened to Bass’s treasure? Stories abound. One legend locates his hidden gold in a cave in East Mountain at Mineral Wells. Another tale argues that Bass hid his gold in a cave west of Prairie Dell near Big Blue Spring. It is unlikely that Bass could have spent all of his gold, given the spare retail opportunities of Texas. Perhaps he did rob more for sport than for profit, which only adds to his celebrity.
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