During the first twenty months or so of the Black Hills gold rush, armed guards were not normally counted among the personnel of the stage coaches. As a matter of fact, in most instances it was to be questioned whether or not any gold rode the stages, for the going was generally thin in the diggings, and the average operator accumulated his bullion for several months before amassing a shipment large enough to be worth the trouble and worry. For all the wealth of the Homestake, the Hills by no means repeated California’s early history, when every stage worth tying a horse to carried at least some treasure. And yet, in the springtime most of the miners cleaned up their winter’s take, it was commonly understood, and ... well, Sam Bass must have thought, every good thing must have a beginning. In March, 1877, Bass organized a gang of cutthroats in Deadwood, and the brief period when one could ride the coaches in comparative safety came to an end. It was not much of a gang that the legendary bandit gathered around him, the five other men being mostly cowardly and quite worthless, either as adventurers or as strategists. Bass himself was little more than a “punk,” as he would be called today, and, as a matter of fact, did not earn his immortality until much later, in Texas, where he was shot down in a barber chair by a Ranger. The gang, if they might so be called, foregathered on the snowy night of March 25 in Deadwood and, after consuming sufficient whiskey to enable them to stand the cold, made their way down the south road to a point a few miles from town where they might intercept the incoming stage from Cheyenne. What genius of diabolical planning led them to attack an inbound conveyance, which could be carrying little more than ordinary mail, rather than the “down” stage, which might possibly be loaded with bullion, has never been figured out, but at any rate they camped themselves in the snow and waited. At last the stage hove into sight, and Bass, the trusty leader, cautioned his hoodlums not to shoot, but merely to stop the coach and demand the mail pouch. Presumably the sentiments of the period held that robbery without gunfire was quite condonable, and an entirely different affair from burglary accompanied by shooting. It is also quite possible that Bass was only minding his own safety, for the night had already been marked by one misfortune—one of his men had managed to shoot himself in the foot while putting on his deadly hardware. As might be expected, however, Bass’s well-laid plans went very much agley. In the excitement of calling “Halt!” one of the bandits proved a bit too eager-fingered, and even as the stage driver was reining his team to a stop, a shotgun blared out, emptying its charge at close range into the driver’s chest. [Illustration: Calamity Jane, during her carnival days] [Illustration: Wild Bill Hickok, from an early portrait]