Sub-titled "The Bandits, Stage Robbers, Outlaws and Stickup Men of
California's Famous Gold Rush Days" - this is another facet of the
California of a century ago and less presented by the scholarly
book editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. His extensive research
projects into various phases of California's colorful history have
unearthed many sources of information on the bandits who ranged the
routes leading from the gold fields, and made the passage of stage
coaches a perilous one. The legends that have grown up around such
names as Joaquin Murieta, Dick Fellows, Tom Bell, Rattlesnake Dick,
Black Bart, and other lesser desperadoes are here explored, and
fact sifted from fiction for what is probably a definitive study.
Somehow - perhaps inevitably- this approach makes for less dramatic
reading than one expects from the title. Much of the material is
familiar to those who have read Hungerford's Wells Fargo (see
report P. 315) or Beebe and Clegg's U.S.West (P. 386) since the
famous company played a vital part in combatting the depredations-
though Mr. Jackson has handled the material in more sober and less
florid fashion. He takes the story to the last of the Mexican
bandits, Tiburcio Vasquez and the 70's and '80's which saw the end
of organized stage robberies. (Kirkus Reviews)
"Bad Company" begins with Joaquin Murieta, whose myth started in
the early 1850s and who remains California's most glamorous outlaw.
Then there's the story of Dick Fellows, who would have been a
quarter of a million dollars richer if it hadn't been for a horse.
And Tom Bell, whom the historian H. H. Bancroft called the most
"intelligent, accomplished and kind-hearted American gentleman who
ever took the road in California." The fascinating account of Black
Bart, whose terrifying reputation spread far and wide, includes
samples of the poetry he left in treasure boxes he had emptied.
Sheet-Iron Jack, an erstwhile barber; the brutal Juan Soto;
Tiburcio Vasquez, a lady-killer whose career impressed Robert Louis
Stevenson; Jack Powers, who held the village of Santa Barbara in
the hollow of his hand; and Juan Flores, who stages a full-scale
"revolution" and some other members of his goodly bad company.
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