Capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1893-1895, 1894-04-09
uslD UP BY AeR Lovea.
u,rhwayman loses a Bride Through
uer Pluck rs Stage Driver.


,,,.hvayman oses Bride Through
Her Pluck rs Stage Driver.
nof course you've heard innumer-
,,o romances of women stage driv
SD,G a neaid F. C. Olcutt of Cheyenne to
sir' ronorter 80 have l, and most of
,hom m are fiction, too, / have no doubt,
~ 7 know of one in which every
'ord Wv is true. The heroine of my story
r,os ~o not the regular driver of the
a,ocb which have in mind, but dur
mo the trip l speak of she was a
..Istitute for her brother, who was
,r,ner and having been reared on
farm she was noted for feats more
.r,J to men than women. For in
,touce she was an excellent horse
woman could ride almost any horse,
,.os first rate shot and was not
ofraid of anything. Often she had
driven the coach for her brother,
when from any cause he wanted to
hove a day off. She did it well, too;
PERFECTLY, in fact, and she was the
prde of all the people roundabout.
"Now she had lover, which was
perfectly natural and quite commend
able Her lover lived with his par.
ents on neighboling farm. He
lacked a great deal of being model
for a Y. NJ. c. A. superintendent, but
vet his infractions of the ordinary
amenities of life were not so fla
grant and glaring as to give him a no
torious character. Still, he was shift
less and inclined to wildness. He
would often go to town, be absent
three or four days and return very
reticent as to where he had been OF
as to what he had been doing. This
morning my heroine cracked the
whip over the stage horses for her 60
mile drive. William-she called him
that, though the rest of the people
thereabouts called him Wild Bill
was absent from home, supposedly
in Cheyenne.
'The coach was a mail coach, of
course, and aside from the revenue
derived from the government for
carrying the mail had a good pas
senger traffic, for 10 years ago rail
roads were scarce in that country.
The coach left at 6 o'clock in the
morning and was due at its destina
ton at s o'clock in the evening. Ev-
erything went well, the passengers
were very merry until about 4
o'clock in the evening. At just about
that hour five men jumped out from
behind a bowlder in front of the
coach and demanded Hands up!
The nervy little woman on the box
didn't hands up worth a cent. In
stead, she dropped her lines, grabbed
a winchester and was pouring flu
sillade of bullets into the robbers be-
fore they, in their amazement, could
comprehend what was going on.
"She so. completely astonished
them that they for a second or two
didn't know straight up, as the say
ing goes. Her example inspired the
passengers to courage, and they, too,
opened fire. The result was that all
the robbers save one fed ingloriously.
The exception was one who had
dropped at the first shot with a
wound in his right shoulder. Well,
after the others had fled, the girl came
down from the box to look at the
man. She stopped over him
and pulled off the mask, revealing to
her astonished eyes the features of
Wild Bill, her lover. No, she didn't
marry him, but she took him into
town, had his wound attended to, and
never revealed to the authorities
what had occurred. That's a true
story. Fort Worth (Tex.) Gazette.