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And if there’s money in that box, tis munny for my purse.
Within a two-week period, driver Mike Hogan’s stage between North San Juan and Marysville was held up twice. Each time, the objective was the Wells Fargo treasure box. During the first robbery, on December 16, 1875, a bandit wearing a checked shirt aimed a rifle at Hogan and gruffly shouted, “Hold up your hands or I’ll blow your brains out.” The robber, a heavyset man with dark hair and dark complexion, did nothing to hide his identity. He then ordered the driver to “hand out that box, and be quick about it.” Hogan obeyed and asked if he could then move on. The bandit responded, “Drive on or I’ll blow your brains out.” Hogan said he could identify the robber “without the least doubt” once he was captured.
The next holdup, on December 28, was different. This time the robber was covered in a white duster and carried a double-barreled shotgun. He jumped out from the side of the road and crouched in front of the lead horses for protection. Then in a loud voice he firmly but politely asked the driver to “throw down the box!” Hogan thought he saw a second gun barrel pointed at him from the bushes and quickly obeyed the robber’s instructions.
Stage carrying mail, express, and passengers on the road.
When a posse returned to the scene later, they discovered the smashed box and the US Mail bag cut open in the shape of an upside-down letter T. A newspaper reported that with this second robbery Hogan was “probably getting mad. Two robberies in as many weeks is more than he can bear, especially as he is an active and experienced police officer.” Left behind was the fake “gun” fashioned out of a stick. Jim Hume realized this was the same highwayman who had robbed the stage at Funk Hill on July 26. “This job is the work of a professional,” he declared.
This bandit was not the only one on Jim Hume’s list of Wells Fargo stagecoach robbers. Just a few days later, with the help of Sheriff Thorn and other Wells Fargo officers, he broke up one of the worst holdup gangs in California. A newspaper reported that Jim was “showing the prisoners how hopeless was their case, and getting them through his persistent questioning to finally admit their guilt.”
It took six months for the “professional” to strike again. On June 2, 1876, the stage from Roseburg, Oregon, to Yreka, California, was stopped and robbed by a man whose appearance and actions fit the description of that individual. This time, although he tried to escape by tiptoeing away to hide his tracks, he nonetheless left behind impressions of his boot, which had identifiable marks. The local sheriff came across a stranger near the robbery site whose boots seemed to match the tracks and arrested him. When Jim Hume arrived and more carefully checked the boots, he determined that the man was not the robber and had him released. The identity of the real bandit remained a mystery.
Still, Jim now had several clues about the robber. Masked and wearing a white duster, he had a deep voice, was polite, and carried a shotgun. What Jim lacked was a name to go with the clues. This changed with the road agent’s fourth robbery on August 3, 1877, between Fort Ross and Duncans Mills. Masked, wearing a linen duster with rags wrapped around his legs, the robber, armed with a shotgun, stepped in front of the horses. The driver, Ash Wilkinson, promptly obeyed the order to “throw off the box.” The passengers on board were not harmed. When lawmen arrived on the scene, they discovered the empty broken treasure box and a Wells Fargo receipt under a rock on a nearby tree stump. On the reverse of the paper was a poem. Each line was written in a different writing style. The poem read:
I’ve labored long and hard for bread
For honor and for riches
But on my corns too long you’ve tred
You fine haired Sons of Bitches.
Black Bart, the Po8 [poet]
To the bottom of the page, Bart added the following sentence:
Driver, give my respects to our friend, the other driver;
But I really had a notion to hang my old disguise hat on his weather eye.
A passenger-loaded stage fording a river. Stagecoach travel was difficult.
Perhaps the message indicated that authorities were powerless to stop him or that he actually knew to target the stage that carried the richest treasure box. Although no one yet knew the robber’s real name, his signature linen duster and double-barreled shotgun now gave him a colorful identity and the beginnings of a popular myth that captured the public imagination.
Nearly a year passed before Black Bart’s next robbery. On July 25, 1878, he stopped the Quincy-to-Oroville stage, high in the Sierra Nevada. As the stage descended a hill, a masked man suddenly jumped out in front of the horses, stopping the coach. “Throw out the box,” he demanded while pointing a shotgun at Charley Seavy, the driver. The masked robber escaped with nearly $400 in coins, a $200 diamond ring, and a $25 watch. But he left behind his second and final poem in the broken treasure box, this one written on brown paper:
Here I lay me down to sleep
to wait the coming morrow
perhaps success perhaps defeat
and everlasting sorrow.
Let come what will I’ll try it on
my condition can’t be worse
and if there’s money in that box
tis munny [sic] in my purse.
Black Bart the Po8
Black Bart’s poetry is displayed on a reward poster.
After the next robbery a few days later on July 30 in Plumas County, Wells Fargo issued a private circular to Wells Fargo agents and local sheriffs containing a reproduction of the poems in Bart’s disguised handwriting and details of his robberies. At the bottom appeared the following: “It will be seen from the above that this fellow is a character that would be remembered as a scribbler and something of a wit or wag, and would be likely to leave specimens of his handwriting on hotel registers and other public places.”
Anyone with information was urged to contact Wells Fargo’s special officer, James B. Hume. The circular did not remain private for long, and newspapers soon carried information about Bart and his poetry to readers. Soon, everyone was talking about the bandit Po8. A key clue, Bart’s upside-down T slashing of the mail bags, was not made public and remained a way to connect him to future robberies.
On October 2 Bart held up the Cahto-to-Ukiah stage, which yielded him $40 and a gold watch. Trackers hired by Wells Fargo followed his escape trail for 60 miles before losing him. Less than two days later, Bart stopped and robbed the stage from Covelo to Ukiah, this time earning $400 for his efforts. On October 4, when Jim Hume arrived on the scene, he discovered peach pits behind a tree on the side of the road—Bart’s meal while waiting for the stage. With this robbery, the reward for Bart’s capture increased to $800: $300 from Wells Fargo, $300 from the State of California, and $200 from the United States Post Office.
Jim, on horseback, tracked Bart’s trail for miles, questioning people along the way. By now, Jim understood that Bart always escaped on foot, but he wondered how the robber could travel long distances so quickly.
It was common, then, for lone travelers to stop at rural farms along their way for a bit of food or to spend the night. These unexpected guests brought welcome news and friendly conversation to isolated farm families. Bart, it appears, took advantage of this hospitality. Jim Hume suspected this and went out of his way to question travelers and homeowners about strangers they encountered after a stage robbery. For Jim, the descriptions of one such guest provided details about the man who was now at the top of Wells Fargo’s list of wanted criminals.
After the last robbery, Bart had made his way to the Eel River ranch of the McCreary family. Fourteen-year-old Donna, who served a meal to the stranger, later provided Hume with a specific description. The guest was about 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighed about 160 pounds, with light gray eyes, bushy eyebrows, and two missing front teeth. His black hair was tinged with gray and thinning at the temples. He wore a full mustache and had a mole on his left cheek. Donna noticed that his coat sleeve was slightly torn and mended with white thread. He had split open his shoes with a knife to lighten the pressure on his toes. Donna’s mother thought their visitor was a traveling minister and remarked on the man’s politeness and conversational ability. He didn’t smoke or drink alcohol. But Jim knew who this man was and issued a circular to Wells Fargo agents and law officers with Bart’s description, which quickly went public in local newspapers.
No more was heard of Black Bart until the next robbery nine months later on June 21, 1879. By then, he had become a folk hero. His public image was of a polite road agent who never harmed or robbed passengers. His only targets were the Wells Fargo treasure boxes and US Post Office mail bags. Bart told one driver, “Sure hope you have a lot of gold in that strongbox. I’m nearly out of money.” Jim Hume now had a new theory about Bart’s crime schedule. Black Bart only robbed when he ran out of money. While he was always seen with his double-barreled shotgun, he never fired a shot.
The public interest in Black Bart grew with each succeeding robbery and only intensified Jim Hume’s efforts to capture him. Some even thought that Bart had supernatural powers. How else could a robber on foot, without a horse, rob stagecoaches 60 miles apart in mountainous country within 24 hours?
After each new robbery, Jim and law officers tried to track Bart’s escape route without much luck. The bandit seemed to simply disappear on foot into the countryside, only to reappear and rob again a distance away. “Detectives on his trail found that after a robbery he never stopped to make camp and cook a meal until twelve or fifteen miles away from the scene of the holdup. Quite a wonderful walker was the man in the linen duster.” Two days after robbing the Redding-bound stage on October 25, Bart stopped another stage on October 27, 1879, 35 miles away.
Black Bart and James Hume were engaged in a public battle of wits. During the September 1, 1880, robbery of the Weaverville-to-Redding stage, Bart asked the driver to give regards to Jim Hume. Jim was not amused and intensified his investigation. As Jim interviewed farmers along Bart’s escape routes, witnesses confirmed the McCrearys’ detailed description of the robber. The next day, on September 2, Jim received a report that a man with Bart’s features had stopped at rancher J. T. Adkinson’s cabin on Eagle Creek. The man had asked for some food, and the rancher prepared a wrapped lunch, which the stranger gratefully accepted and went on his way. Adkinson’s description of his visitor fit Bart, but the rancher could not believe that the polite, friendly man he’d met could be a notorious criminal.
Other mountain people who met Bart had the same opinion. One man remembered, “He was a polite, agreeable man who had told them that he was a miner and that he suffered from a disease of the throat.” With similar reports about other sightings, Jim now knew all about Bart’s robbery techniques and how the highwayman looked and behaved. What he didn’t know was Bart’s real identity and where he would strike next.
While Jim was discouraged, Bart also experienced difficult moments. During his robbery of the northbound stage from Roseburg, Oregon, to Redding on November 20, 1880, driver Joe Morgan threw down the mail sacks but told Bart the treasure box was too heavy to lift. Bart, his shotgun at the ready, climbed on the wheel to help lift the box. Just then, Morgan reached for a hatchet hidden under his seat and swung at the robber, just missing his head. Bart, frightened by this unexpected turn of events, dropped away quickly, leaving the box untouched. A newspaper wrongly suggested, “The robber was probably a green hand.” But Black Bart was no amateur.
There was at least one other close call for Bart. At a small country hotel, a stagecoach driver thought he recognized the man who had held him up. He whispered his suspicion to the landlord, who responded, “Why, man, you’re crazy…. I know he was in his room after the stage went by, because he called the porter up.” But he wasn’t. As the stage passed the hotel, Bart did call the porter to his room, then after the porter left he slipped unnoticed out of the house. Bart paddled across the river in a small boat in time to overtake and rob the stage. He then returned unnoticed to the hotel and “sauntered down from his room to breakfast just as the stage driver came in with his tale of a desperate highwayman.”
Jim devised ways to make Bart’s life more difficult. First, realizing that Bart only stopped stages that did not have shotgun messengers, Jim added armed guards to an increasing number of stagecoach runs, particularly those carrying large amounts of gold and money. He also ordered more of the Wells Fargo treasure boxes to be chained down inside the coaches. When Bart encountered his first such box on August 31, 1881, he ordered the driver, John Sulloway, to get off the coach and hold the horses while he climbed in and smashed the box open with his ax.
Jim Hume got another clue about the timing of Bart’s robberies. Horace Williams, driver of the Yrekato-Redding stage on October 8, 1881, asked Bart, “How do you make it anyway?” Bart responded, “I don’t make it very well for the chances I have to take.” It seems that in some robberies, Bart did not find much money but in others he did. It was hard and dangerous work. Wells Fargo was often not forthcoming in publicizing the amounts robbers took from their treasure boxes.
Bart’s reputation for politeness was sometimes not deserved. In his robbing of the Lakeview-to-Redding stage on October 11, 1881, an unusually nervous Bart acted especially crude, leading some to believe that it was not really him but a copycat. He threatened the driver to throw down the box or “I’ll blow your head off!” Then, unlike in his previous robberies, he pointed his gun at the passengers in the coach. After he ordered the stage to move on, a scared young boy riding next to the driver said, “I’m glad the robber didn’t get my parcel.” When the driver asked him what was inside, the boy answered, “I’ve got my lunch in it.” Later, referring to the small amount of money Bart got in that robbery, Jim Hume said, “That stage robber would have been better off if he’d left the Wells Fargo box and taken the kid’s lunch.”
While the robberies continued to perplex Jim Hume, ordinary citizens wondered whether Black Bart would ever be caught. One newspaper reflected on the lack of success in tracking him down: “The roads in many parts of Northern California have been troubled a great deal … by one-man highway adventures, and the bold man of the road has always escaped capture.” Then, perhaps taking a dig at Jim, the article ended with, “Certain it is that the job is one for a good detective.” Writing about the standoff between Jim and Bart, another newspaper commented, “If Detective Hume fails to catch him before he dies, he will count his life a blank and his labor wasted.”
No one then realized just how close Jim was to solving the puzzle of Black Bart.
