Wyatt Earp, perhaps the most noted of these messengers, entered his long tour of Wells Fargo duty through that firm’s Deadwood office. Earp, as any lover of western legend will tell, earned his vigorous reputation as marshal in the bloody Kansas cattle towns of Dodge City and Abilene. After the excitement of these Gomorrahs had worn off, he made his way to Deadwood in 1876—not as a gold-seeker, but apparently merely in search of honest and not too dangerous employment. At any rate, his brief stay in the Hills was given to the profession of coal and wood dispensing rather than to law enforcement. Either the weather or the lethargy of the place suited him poorly, for within the year he was casting about for some means of making his way back to his own plains country. Taking advantage of the public clamor against road agents after the Sam Bass affair, he offered his services to the express agent and was hired for the single trip out for fifty dollars cash and free passage. The agent was by no means doling out any charity in this exchange, for he knew the value of Earp’s reputation and looked upon the fifty dollars as a cheap form of insurance. He advertised in the local newspaper: “The Spring cleanup will leave for Cheyenne on the regular stage at 7 AM next Monday. Wyatt Earp of Dodge will ride shotgun.” Bullion shippers were quick to take advantage of this extra protection, and it was recorded that no less than two hundred thousand dollars in bullion was weighed in for that special trip. It would be most dramatic to recount that Earp’s one trip was marked by attempted mass raids, burning coaches, and wounded drivers, but the truth of the matter is that the journey was made on time and in good order. Only one shot was fired, and that by Marshal Earp, who took offense at the suspicious actions of a rider whose course seemed to parallel the stage route for an unaccountable distance. Without stopping the stage or otherwise alarming the passengers Earp dropped the offending horseman a few miles out of Deadwood, and the rest of the trip was made without incident. Despite the vigor with which the treasure coaches were protected, armed robbery continued to take place sporadically all during the final decade before the rails pushed through from the East. By and large these forays, while bloody, were unsuccessful, and not a single desperado was able to rise to any sort of fame during that period. On the other hand, there was one robbery which must go down in history for the strange way in which the loot was recovered.