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THE HEAT IS A KILLER
The tortuous heat of summer can be a rude awakening for anyone visiting Texas, even a native returning from a few years in cooler climes. For Sam Bass, a native of the Denton area, June and July of 1878 -- exactly 120 years ago -- must have seemed like a cruelly warm welcome home. Bass and his gang had netted $60,000 in a train robbery in Big Springs, Nebraska, and were re-entering Texas with lawmen hot on their trail. On June 13, 1878, a posse led by Texas Ranger June Peak and Sheriff W. F. Eagan caught up with the Bass gang at Salt Creek, Texas. In the shoot-out that ensued, the lawmen killed a gang member named Arkansas Johnson and captured all of the gang’s horses. The surviving outlaws escaped on foot and made it to Denton riding stolen horses. During his flight through Denton, Bass asked a young black man named Andy Nelson to show him the quickest route to the lower crossing of the Trinity River. Years later, Nelson would recount this harrowing incident in an interview with field operatives with the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Bass concocted a plan to rob the bank at Round Rock, but one of his cohorts, Jim Murphy, turned informant and got word to the Texas Rangers. After camping outside of town, Bass and his buddies -- Seaborn Barnes and Frank Jackson -- rode into Round Rock on Friday, July 19, a day before the robbery was to take place, to case the bank. Pretending to be three average cowpokes, the outlaws tied up their mounts near Henry Koppel’s general store on East Main Street where Bass intended to buy some tobacco. That’s when the outlaws were accosted by two local deputy sheriffs, Ellis Grimes and Morris Moore. Supposedly, Grimes and Moore had no idea who the three outlaws were. They had merely noticed that the strangers appeared to be wearing pistols -- which, at the time, happened to be against the law in Texas. Grimes boldly approached Bass and said, "Young man, give me your gun." "You can have both of them," replied Bass, who whipped out a pair of pistols and immediately began firing. Grimes fell dead with five bullets in his body. Deputy Moore went down with a chest wound. Suddenly, the whole town seemed to erupt in a storm of bullets and gunsmoke. A shot from Texas Ranger Dick Ware fatally wounded Seaborn Barnes. Through the hail of gunfire from other Rangers, lawmen, and armed private citizens, Bass and his pal Frank Jackson made it to their horses and galloped out of town. Bass, however, had suffered a serious wound, and Jackson dropped him off under a tree just outside of town and rode on, never to be seen again. Bass was soon captured and brought back into Round Rock, where he drifted in and out of consciousness for the next two days, refusing to divulge any details of his criminal activities to the lawmen. On Sunday, July 21, Bass uttered these last words: "The world is bobbing around me." It was his 27th birthday. Sam Bass will probably always be Texas’ most famous outlaw. Even today, Round Rock is best known as the place where his life came to a tragic and brutal end. (7/1/98) |
| Links: To find other WPA interviews with pioneer Texans who claimed to have known Sam Bass, or otherwise mention him in their oral histories, go to WPA Life Histories from Texas and do a search for the words "Sam Bass." "The Ballad of Sam Bass" and other great lawmen/outlaw tunes 
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