Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S U M M E R 2 0 1 6 86 seated beside the driver on the ill-fated Helena to Deer Lodge coach. e leader of the robbers, later identified as a Texas drover named Mike Gamble, allowed Davie, the stage driver, to stay on the box when he objected to leaving the coach driverless with ladies and children aboard. Another passenger, a Mr. Pennoyer, was found to have a flask of whisky and a box of cigars, which Mike hospitably passed around to the other stage passengers. e newspaper account noted that one of the ladies aboard the coach "doubtless speaking more from grateful recollections of the forbearance manifested toward them than from an unprejudiced and judicial standpoint, remarked after they got started, 'Well! He acted the perfect gentleman, anyhow.'" Mike Gamble's manners did him no good several days later when he was apprehended, tried and received a life sentence. He had made a mistake which cannier highwaymen did not: He took the mail pouch as well as the strongbox, making it a federal crime. Montana's dilapidated territorial penitentiary was deemed insuffi- cient to contain Gamble and he was transferred to the U.S. Peniten- tiary in Iowa, and from there to Albany, New York. His confederates received lesser sentences. Fourteen years later, President Cleveland pardoned Gamble, and the editor of the Deer Lodge paper wondered, "What will be his future? Will his long term of imprisonment be the means of softening and changing his nature for the better, or will he emerge from prison with a thirst for revenge burning deep down in his heart?" Like a child snatched from the path of a stampede or a gunfight in a saloon, stagecoach robberies seem more like Hollywood drama than history, but stage robberies were real and frequent. Tired horses slowing down to pull a laden coach up a steep hill far from towns were easy prey, and getaways were easy in the backcountry. Stage stations, located roughly ten miles apart were also targeted. Each "stage" of the journey was planned to allow for a change of horses and with luck, decent meals for the passengers. As time passed, and farms, ranches or mines grew up in their vicinity, some of these stations became the nucleus of towns and could boast of their fine food. More typical was a meal described by a stage passenger in 1867. Reaching a station at 9 o'clock in the evening they were met by a former stage driver, Tom Caldwell, who "kindly cared for the weary and hungry travelers with such mountain delicacies as bacon and bread, accompanied by a good cup of coffee, cooked with sagebrush. A whole day's ride without eating, over the mountains, is the best appetizer in the world, and ample justice was done to the viands, I as- sure you." Since the unnamed passenger had subsisted the first night on one potato, he was probably not critical of Caldwell's somewhat limited menu. Robbers, who took over one station, tied up the cook and the hostler and stashed them in the granary. When the stage arrived, the driver and passengers were also tied up, the coach gone through, and then the robbers untied them and allowed them to depart. e hostler (the man responsible for the relays of horses) rolled over to where the cook lay and the cook chewed off the hostler's bonds. e cook then rode to Virginia City with the news — and here is a pitfall for researchers: ough the story came out in the Virginia City, Montana paper, the coach was from Virginia City, Nevada.

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