Ogallala shopkeeper Millard Fillmore Leech certainly didn’t look the part of a manhunter. He offered an unassuming appearance as a short, wiry gentleman who wore old shoes, ragged pantaloons, a new hat, and a loose coat with the tails crudely cut off. Although hidden under his coat he carried a .45-caliber pistol and two belts full of cartridges, and to one observer, there was the unmistakable “brilliancy of his eyes.”

Leech put those eyes to use – and his life on the line – on the evening of Sept. 22, 1877, while single-handedly tracking a gang of outlaws. Four days earlier, the gang executed the greatest heist in Union Pacific Railroad history. The bandits stole $60,000 in freshly minted gold coins from the San Francisco Mint, as well as lifting another $1,300 from a stunned lot of the train’s passengers. The robbery occurred at a desolate railroad depot in the far western reaches of the Nebraska prairie called Big Springs, a station 21 miles west of Ogallala and 350 miles west of Omaha.

A frenzy of telegraph dispatches went out in the immediate aftermath, which ignited a massive manhunt that included railroad detectives, regional lawmen, U.S. soldiers, and private citizens enticed by the $10,000 reward. Beyond speculation, no one knew the identity of the outlaws, the total number of gang members, or even which direction they were fleeing. In fact, no one had knowingly even laid eyes on any of the robbers since they departed Big Springs.

Leech would change everything. E.M. Morsman, Union Pacific Railroad Express Company superintendent, hired the 27-year-old on a hunch. Leech, who once investigated moonshiners in Tennessee, had already taken it upon himself to survey the scene of the crime at Big Springs before ever meeting the railroad executive. The shopkeeper also knew most people in the region and was intimately familiar with the countryside from various hunting excursions. Morsman was sold on Leech, who soon proved his worth. He trailed the band of ruffians to a camp in a thicket on the Republican River a few miles from the Nebraska-Kansas state line.

“I was 24 hours behind them, but as they rode in a body, I had no trouble with their trail,” Leech told The New York Times in 1895. “I made 60 miles that day and about 11 o’clock p.m. came upon them on the bank of the Republican River.”

Tying his horse down at a safe distance, Leech cautiously approached the camp until he could draw no closer for fear of giving himself away. He then waited, hoping the bandits would fall asleep. Hours passed. Once he heard no noise, he made a decision that was not only bold but bordered on reckless. He began to crawl on his hands and knees in complete darkness until he found himself within feet of the camp. There, in the glow of a campfire, he scanned the scene to note every detail.

Leech instantly recognized four of the six outlaws – Joel Collins, Jim Berry, Sam Bass and Bill Potts, who sometimes used the aliases Bill Heffridge or Bill Heffery. A posse led by Sheriff Asa Bradley of North Platte may have been the first to discover the gang’s trail near Big Springs, where the bandits brazenly journeyed to buy supplies after the robbery. They buried their gold somewhere on the trail before entering town. Bradley and his men later found an empty, iron-clad strongbox that once held a batch of gold coins, half a handkerchief, an old pocketbook, and a tobacco box left by the outlaws about 10 miles from Big Springs.

Leech traced the piece of handkerchief to a store in Ogallala, where he also located the gang’s camp nearby with a distinctive boot print – one that belonged to a new pair of boots he sold Collins, who purchased them on behalf of Berry. Leech remembered how he refused to sell Berry the boots on credit because of his nefarious reputation around town.

Now Leech confirmed that both men were involved. If that wasn’t enough, he also spotted a large, seamless grain bag sitting in the middle of the gang’s camp. Leech instantly suspected the bag held the stolen gold coins. Or, at least, a portion of them. Curiosity drove him to lift the bag, and although he admitted to never seeing one coin, had no doubt as to the bag’s content based on its extraordinary weight.

Leech decided to tempt death no further. He crept out of camp, retrieved his horse, and waited for daybreak before he continued to trail the gang. The next day he employed a local ranch hand to report his findings to the Union Pacific officials in Ogallala. Telegraph messages were again sent with urgency, now with the identity of several gang members based on Leech’s daring exploits.

The outlaws, meanwhile, traveled oblivious to the fact they were no longer unknown. They divided the loot into $10,000 parcels and headed in pairs in three different directions. Yet, throughout the region, a prolific manhunt closed in on them with lawmen hellbent on making them pay for their deeds. As for the bandits, they parted ways thinking they had pulled off the perfect crime.

But did they?

 

SEPTEMBER 18, 1877

Union Pacific station agent and telegraph operator George W. Barnhardt glanced at the cloudless sky and noticed how the moon shone brightly upon the prairie. The agent manned the lonely outpost, which consisted of a depot, a water tank, his house, and separate quarters for the railroad section hands. As 10 p.m. approached, Barnhardt waited for the eastward bound Union Pacific express No. 4 to pass en route from San Francisco to Chicago.

As usual, all appeared quiet and peaceful.

Barnhardt then turned in his small office only to see the barrels of four cocked revolvers staring back at him. Two masked bandits – each with both hands filled with a revolver – ordered the station agent to destroy the telegraph instruments. He initially tried to deceive the outlaws by pulling up his sounder, which wouldn’t render the telegraph inoperable.

“Hold on there!” one gunman squawked authoritatively. “That won’t do. We don’t want any damned foolishness in this business.”

Barnhardt obeyed. The gunmen ordered him to hang out the mail bag and red light, which signaled the engineer to stop the train. Engineer George W. Vrooman pulled the No. 4 into the depot at 10:40 p.m., shutting off the steam and reversing the engine. As the train slowed to a halt, two masked men pointed rifles at him. Thinking it was a joke, he stooped to pick up a piece of coal to chuck at the pranksters. A rifle ball whizzed past his head. Startled, Vrooman jumped down from his perch and tried to hide behind the engine, only to have another armed man point another rifle at him.

The outlaws quickly and systematically subdued the key members of the train’s crew.

Finally, they turned their attention to the express car messenger Charles Miller, who sat behind a locked door with the train safe and other valuable cargo. Miller was awakened by a knock from Barnhardt, who had a gun pointed at his head. Miller cracked the door open, just enough for Bass and Jack Davis to force their way into the car and thrust their revolvers in Miller’s face.

Bass and Davis proceeded to mercilessly beat Miller until he opened the safe. Miller repeatedly pleaded with the outlaws, explaining that he didn’t know the combination. The more he pleaded, the more he was beaten, until he finally begged the bandits to kill him. Outside, the train’s conductor M.M. Patterson heard Miller’s cries and shouted that Miller was telling the truth. No one knew the combination. The men guarding Patterson told him to shut up.

The outlaws removed Miller from the car, but the beatings continued.

Bass and Davis frantically searched through the car’s cargo until they stumbled upon several iron-clad boxes. They asked Miller what they contained. Bleeding profusely from the head and mouth, he said he suspected they held some sort of “castings” given their hefty weight. One of the outlaws hammered at a box with an axe, revealing something that would leave them astonished.

The boxes contained $60,000 in freshly minted gold eagle coins from the San Francisco Mint. Forty-thousand dollars were consigned to Wells, Fargo & Company in New York, while another $20,000 were to be delivered to the New York Bank of Commerce. In addition, the robbers found 535 silver bars worth a total of $682,476. But each bar weighed 100 pounds, rendering them too heavy to haul off.

At the same time, the outlaws demanded the passengers surrender all their money and valuables. One passenger – Andrew Riley of Omaha – saw four masked gunmen quickly approach his first-class coach with cocked revolvers. The outlaws fired twice at Riley, grazing his left hand with one shot, and piercing his coat with the other.

“Hold up your hands, every son of a bitch, and keep still,” one outlaw shouted. “We want your money, but will give each man $10 back, and we won’t hurt a man unless he makes a break. We’ve killed one man and don’t want to kill anymore, but your money we will have; so, damn you, keep still and give it up – all of it, quietly.”

Riley surrendered $480 in cash, a $300 gold watch, and a railway ticket to Chicago. Riley would later reveal to railroad agents that he recognized one of the masked outlaws as Joel Collins. Riley said he had become acquainted with Collins in the fall of 1876 in the Black Hills, where the native Texan was running a dive saloon that only attracted the dregs of society. Riley further revealed that only two weeks prior, he had smoked a cigar with Collins in Ogallala.

Leech would later confirm Riley’s suspicions as the noose tightened on the gang.

THE BLOODY END

Joel Collins and Bill Potts rode into Buffalo Station, Kansas on Sept. 26, eight days after the great heist. Buffalo Station, like Big Springs, was another remote train depot on a vast prairie. Unbeknownst to Collins, his name as the gang’s ringleader had already reached the Buffalo Station agent William Sternberg via a telegraph wire.

So, by the time Collins stopped to buy a few supplies from the depot store, Sternberg took note of the writing on an envelope Collins dropped: “Joel Collins, Ogallala, Nebraska.” Sternberg instinctively, and foolishly, asked if he was Joel Collins. The outlaw hesitatingly answered in the affirmative. The agent said he thought he recognized him from a previous meeting, and then hurriedly excused himself.

Little did Collins know but Ellis County Sheriff George W. Bardsley and a posse of nine cavalrymen from Fort Hays were camped nearby, on the lookout for the bandit and his cohorts. Sternberg informed Bardsley of his encounter. Soon, the sheriff caught up with Collins and Potts and asked them to ride back to the station to answer some questions. At first, the two outlaws agreed. Then Collins sensed a trap.

“Pard, if we are to die,” Collins said to Potts, “we might as well die game.”

A shootout ensued. Bardsley shot and killed Collins, while a private rode up behind Potts and gunned him down. In a matter of seconds, two of the six train robbers had been sent to their graves. The posse recovered $19,456.67.

Twenty days later, on Oct. 16 in Mexico, Missouri, Jim Berry died from gangrene poisoning after being shot by Audrain County Sheriff Harry Glasscock with buckshot in his left leg. Only $2,768 was recovered from Berry, who stepped off a train with Tom Nixon in Mexico on Oct. 5. Nixon then supposedly caught the first train bound for Chicago and vanished from history.

Berry, unwisely, went on a spending spree and caught the attention of local authorities.

Like Nixon, Jack Davis also mysteriously disappeared after parting with Bass in Texas. Bass himself later claimed Davis ventured to New Orleans, although those might have been the lying words of a dying outlaw.

Bass met his fate in Round Rock, Texas in July 1878. By then, he had already cemented himself as an infamous outlaw. He led a gang in the aftermath of the Big Springs’ heist that successfully robbed two stagecoaches and four trains within 25 miles of Dallas during a six-month period, drawing the full attention of the vaunted Texas Rangers. His dramatic death – triggered by betrayal from within his gang – only added luster to the legend.

Bass and his comrades camped outside Round Rock, intent on robbing the Williamson County Bank on Saturday, July 21, after deposits were received on Friday. The outlaws envisioned a big score at the bank and then disappearing into Mexico. First, they scouted the town for any last-minute details that might assist them in their heist. Bass and two of his associates – Frank Jackson and Seaborn Barnes – thus rode into town on Friday one final time to surveil the bank.

Unbeknownst to Bass, Texas Rangers and local law enforcement officials were already in town, laying a trap. They had been tipped off to the prospective bank robbery by Jim Murphy, an old friend of Bass who agreed to infiltrate the gang. Murphy, somehow, managed to peel off from the threesome as they continued into town that fateful day.

Maurice B. Moore, a Travis County deputy sheriff in nearby Austin, was one of those asked to assist in the apprehension of the outlaws if the robbery unfolded. Moore agreed, adding only “if the pay is good.” Williamson County Deputy Sheriff A.W. “Caige” Grimes – an ex-Texas Ranger – was with Moore when the three desperadoes first appeared in town.

The three strangers leisurely passed the lawmen, giving them a hard stare as they entered a store. Moore thought he saw one of the strangers wearing a six-shooter under his coat. He turned to Grimes and said, “Let me go over and see.” With that, Moore and Grimes followed the three men into the store.

Grimes carelessly walked up to the men, placed a hand on Bass and asked if he had a pistol. “Yes,” Bass replied, and suspecting they had been discovered, all three outlaws immediately opened fire. Grimes bolted for the door with his pistol still holstered and cried, “Don’t boys!” He dropped dead outside the store, riddled by bullets.

A slug also pierced the left lung of Moore, who miraculously kept firing. One of his bullets struck Bass, taking two fingers on his right hand in the process. The crackle of gunfire instantly attracted other lawmen and townspeople as the three outlaws shot their way to a nearby alley where their horses awaited.

Trying to mount his horse, Bass received a slug from the pistol of Texas Ranger George Herold. Bass cried out, “Oh, Lord!” He had been struck from behind, near his spine. The bullet tore through a kidney and exited inches from his left navel. Jackson covered Bass while assisting his wounded leader climb aboard his horse. Nearby, a single bullet dropped Barnes dead as he tried to mount his horse.

Jackson and Bass then rode furiously out of town. They did so as Jackson struggled to keep the badly bleeding Bass aboard his horse. A pursuit of the outlaws ensued, but the chase entered terrain marked by rocks and cedar brakes at dusk and the trail went cold.

The outlaws made it to their campsite to grab additional firearms before continuing their desperate escape. The men didn’t get more than three miles from their camp when Bass told Jackson he could no longer ride. No one knows what was said between the two bandits, but Jackson continued alone and disappeared from history.

Bass remained in the woods, in pain and bleeding throughout the night. A posse found him the next day, sitting beneath a tree. They approached cautiously, only to have Bass yell, “Don’t shoot! I surrender.”

The rangers summoned a doctor, who informed Bass that his wounds were fatal. They took the outlaw back to Round Rock, laid him on a cot in a shack, fed him and made him as comfortable as possible. Repeated attempts to entice Bass to relate the activities of his gang proved futile. He remained tight-lipped until the end. The next day – Sunday, July 21, 1878 – Bass drew his last breath at 3:55 p.m. on his 27th birthday.

Texans hailed Bass as a sort of “Robin Hood” for generously spending his stolen money with those who crossed his path. Songs and books would also later glamorize his criminal deeds.

Leech, meanwhile, became a footnote to Nebraska history – albeit one worth remembering. Due to his daring actions and whit, the shopkeeper-turned-investigator became the lynchpin in a manhunt that tracked down four of the six train robbers. His exploits alone proved those desperadoes had not pulled off the perfect crime.