← Back to the front page

The Notorious Men of the Wild West

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2019 32 min

23. Tracked by the Texas Rangers

Sam Bass began spending lavishly after the Big Springs heist. When some of his Black Hills Bandits colleagues were tracked down and killed by law enforcement, he formed his own gang in Texas. The new outfit robbed four trains and two stagecoaches near Dallas in 1878, but netted little and triggered a manhunt led by Texas Rangers.

Bass managed to evade capture, until one of his gang was pressured into turning informant, and told the Rangers of Bass’ plan to rob a bank in Round Rock, Texas. The Rangers reached the small town on June 19^th, 1878, the same day as Bass.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.