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The Notorious Men of the Wild West

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2019 32 min

22. Shootout in Round Rock

While Sam Bass was casing Round Rock’s bank, he aroused the suspicions of local law enforcement. A sheriff’s deputy approached him and asked Bass if he had a gun. “Yes“, he replied, pulled it out, and shot the deputy dead. A firefight erupted, and the noise attracted the recently arrived Texas Rangers, who joined the shootout.

It ended with a dead outlaw, and a mortally wounded Bass jumping on his horse and fleeing town. The following day, he was tracked down and found beneath a tree, bleeding from a gruesome wound caused by a bullet that had entered his back above the right hip bone, and shredded his right kidney before leaving a gaping exit wound. Bass was taken back to Round Rock, but died the next day, June 21^st, on his 27^th birthday.

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.