Every story of the old west in this
series is true. While many western stories have the ring of campfire tall tales
you will find none here. Every story is based on fact whether about a mighty
warrior humbled by flickering lights or a sea serpent said to live in a desert
lake.
Or this one about a certain
stagecoach robber who, squeaky voice or not, knew how to handle a six-gun.
Though not a big man, nonetheless the bandit was remembered by one lawman as “a
tiger cat” quite willing to kill in cold blood.
Michael McKeever
THE
SQUEAKY-VOICED BANDIT
The horses’ hooves thudded in the
dust as the stagecoach rounded the bend. Two men waited ahead on horseback. One
was large, the other smaller and slender, probably hardly more than a boy. The
big man leveled a 45-caliber pistol at the stage driver and barked, “Throw up
your hands!”
The second bandit may have been
smaller but the six-shooter he held in his hand was big enough. The stage
driver, resigned to being robbed, pulled on the reins and shoved his booted
foot hard against the brake. The stagecoach ground to a halt, its team rearing
in their harnesses.
Ordinarily there was nothing special
about the 65-mile stage run between Globe and Florence , Arizona
It was May 30, 1899 and with the
twentieth century only months away stagecoaches were rapidly fading from the west.
The driver and his passengers had just become the unwilling participants in the
last stagecoach robbery in American history. And then there was something about
the smaller bandit. As he ordered the passengers out of the coach his voice was
high-pitched, almost squeaky with excitement.
He, as it turned out, was a she. One
of the last two stagecoach robbers in history was in fact a woman, married and
the mother of two. Her name was Pearl Hart.
Pearl’s husband was a drifter who
wandered in and out of her life like tumbleweed. Pearl, tired of his wandering
ways, sent her children off to live with her mother and set out on her own. It
wasn’t long before she fell in with a hard-luck miner named Joe Boot. When
Boot’s mining claim didn’t pan out he suggested they rob the stage.
The holdup netted the two bandits
$428.20, a tidy sum for the time. They rode for three days through
hard-scrabble country putting miles between them and the robbery. But it was to
no avail, a posse led by Pima County Sheriff Bill Truman tracked them down.
The story of her capture depended
on who told it. Sheriff Truman said both bandits were sound asleep and easily
disarmed. Pearl
insisted they jumped to their feet with drawn pistols but “found we were
looking straight into the mouths of gaping Winchesters.”
Whatever the facts, Sheriff Truman
was clearly impressed by the feisty female bandit. Pearl was, he said, “a tiger cat for nerve
and endurance and would have killed me if she could.” He also remembered that
she was furious with the woebegone Joe Boot for not resisting.
Clapped into jail she promptly
escaped and fled east, riding hard into New
Mexico . There she was recognized, arrested and
returned to Arizona , undoubtedly to New Mexico ’s relief.
Pearl Hart was, recalled one New Mexico
lawman, “the most foul-mouthed” person he had ever come across.
Back in Arizona she was sentenced to five years in
the Territorial Prison. After her release she lived for many more years, one
account places her on a Globe street as late as 1957. Dainty and innocent-looking with snow-white
hair, the one-time Arizona
wildcat had become an elderly lady with a sweet smile.
--The End--
No comments:
Post a Comment