This particular villainy, remembered as the Canyon Springs robbery, took place on September 28, 1878. The locale of the outrage was not far out of Deadwood on the rough way through Beaver Creek and Jenney Stockade into Wyoming and thence to Cheyenne. The coach, on this fateful occasion, was rumored to be carrying nearly one hundred thousand dollars in ingots from the Homestake, as well as from other works; and although shipments of such size were not altogether rare, they were sufficiently out of the ordinary to suggest the services of additional shotgun messengers. It may well have been the mere fact of the scheduling of additional guards that called the attention of the bandits to this particular manifest. The holdup took place in midafternoon, as the driver was stopping the coach to water the horses. In the gunplay three men were killed, and the bandits escaped with the loot from the treasure chest, which they apparently managed to chisel open. Ten miles away one of the guards came upon a party of horsemen, who returned to the scene of the carnage; but upon their arrival they found the coach despoiled of its gold. In many such cases the bandits would have been recognized as local or near-local citizens; but in this instance all of the desperadoes appeared to be strangers to the Hills, and consequently the law officers had very little except guesswork to guide them in their pursuit. Guesswork coupled with just plain snooping soon uncovered a trail, however, for one of the stage agents turned up a ranch owner who gave the information that a small group of men had, on the very evening of the holdup, bought a light spring wagon from him. Such a transaction was unusual enough to indicate that the purchasers were by no means individuals of legitimate calling, and in all probability were the actual bandits. Setting out on this trail, the agent managed to trace them and their wagon all the way to Cheyenne, where the group had apparently turned to the east. By that time persons who had seen them in passing had recognized them, and their names were broadcast to the marshals and sheriffs of all the eastern regions of the plains. Day after day the stage agent followed their trail east, across the Missouri, across the border of Nebraska, and on to the pleasant town of Atlantic, in Iowa. By that time the wagon had been discarded and the gang had broken up, and the agent was following only one spoor—the track of a young man who was always seen with a strange, heavy pack on his back. In the town of Atlantic the trail came to an abrupt end, and indeed the mystery might never have been solved had it not been for a strange display in the street window of a local bank. Pausing to see what it might be that was engaging the attention of a crowd at the window, the agent was astounded to behold part of the very loot he was pursuing—two bullion bricks stamped with serial numbers which identified them beyond a doubt as part of the Canyon Springs treasure.