The door was open, and the detectives present in the bull pen let out a cheer. Almost eight years of investigating. Now an arrest was made by one of the nation’s most respected detectives.
Hume rose in his seat and approached Bolton.
“Mr. Bolton, I have been looking forward to this moment for a long time. You have been a thorn in the side of Wells Fargo and to my friend Morse and myself. Specifically, since July of 1875. You have robbed some twenty-eight of our Concords.
“Please sit down so we can get to know you.”
The prisoner sat and the three conversed for several hours. He was not interrogated. The talk was more the nature of three old school friends getting caught up after not seeing one another for some time.
They found the man’s name was really Charles Boles, he was a fifty-five-year-old war veteran and great poetry fan. He carried a shotgun yet never used it. Subsequent searches of his room and storage found the shotgun. It was a breech loader whose hammers were permanently frozen in the cocked position and totally inoperative. The only thing working was the barrel wedge which allowed Boles to break the old gun down to carry in a duffle bag when walking to robbery sites. He admitted he was terrified of horses. He rode the ferry across San Francisco Bay and walked to each robbery site. Sometimes, he said larger hauls of gold coins were difficult for him to transport back to the city.
After advising the district attorney’s office who they had in custody, they turned him over to the San Francisco Police to hold until trial.
Boles, because he was sixty (he had lied about his age) and had never harmed anyone, was sentenced to six years at San Quentin State Penitentiary. His charge was one count of armed robbery. He was not charged with the other twenty-seven. No treasure from the robberies was ever recovered. A model prisoner, he would be released four years later and would literally drop off the face of the earth.
After considering him the spawn of the devil for eight years, Hume and Morse candidly admitted to each other over whiskeys the night of the arrest how charming a gentleman Charles Boles was.
Sarah felt good about Harry Morse getting all the credit. He devoted eight years to chasing Black Bart. He deserved the addition to his already national fame sure to follow capturing the stage robber. There would be other stage robberies and train robberies, but Sarah thought, there would never be another Black Bart.
Morse Detective Agency expanded greatly from the fame of its founder. Probably far more than Harry Morse wanted. He did not want to be a large business owner. He loved solving crimes. No one would be more famous at it until he was surpassed worldwide by a fictional London detective with an odd hat four years later.
9
Sarah was glad to come home, especially with a feeling of a job well done. She had ridden hours alone, found her site, done a perfect crime scene sketch and search and had found the clue resulting in the arrest of one of the most sought-after outlaws in the West.
To cap it off, she had assured the credit went to the detective who deserved it the most. Nobody had put in the work to capture Black Bart like Harry Morse.
Pope agreed with her when she shared the story over dinner with the rest of her new family. He got up and hugged her with pride.
She couldn’t help tease her husband by quoting Morse who said, “When you drew on Boles when he was heading back into the hotel, I’m not sure even Pope could have whipped out a .44 any faster!”
Instead of taking it as a jab, he was filled with even more pride. She truly was one of the best detectives in America. Not best woman detective. Simply one of the best. Period.
For the first time, he shared his case about potential drugs coming in from offshore. He was stumped as to the frequency cycle of deliveries and how the contraband was being moved from the remote cliff to San Francisco. Until he was able to watch the operation unseen, there seemed little he could do to stem the flow.
Slightly bored without a ranch to run, Israel offered to ride out and “take a look see”, every other day. Pope accepted the offer and made sure his deputies knew who the new player in their surveillance game was.
By the time something broke, they were all wearing coats to combat the chill coming off the Pacific.
It was Israel who rode to the coast and saw a wagon and team sitting unattended near the spot they had ridden down with the Lanes several months before.
He made sure nobody saw him when he rode into nearby woods and dismounted.
Israel furtively moved to the edge of the woods and crawled to the cliff and peered down. He saw four men waiting. A wooden longboat was being rowed in by two men. It had packages piled in the stern.
He saw the four waiting men offload the packages. Israel counted twenty. The men carried them two at a time up the steep slope and piled them at the top.
It was clear to the elder Pope they did not want to put them in the unattended wagon a hundred yards away from the edge.
As the men passed, he saw they were Asians. He guessed Chinese but could not be sure. He had heard about Tongs running crime in San Francisco and thought this may be an example.
He watched as the boat rowed half a mile offshore to a waiting ship and was cranked aboard davits. The ship, which Israel thought must be about a hundred fifty feet, steamed off as the men on the beach completed their job.
Moving through the woods like the frontiersman he was, Israel watched the men throw a tarp over the bed of the wagon and ride off. They went south.
He followed close enough to not lose them and far enough to not be seen. He knew trailing like he was constituted a slippery slope of risk.
The wagon went into Sausalito in late afternoon. He saw it disappear behind a restaurant.
Israel tied his horse to a hitching rail and casually walked down the street. He noted the name of the restaurant and returned to his horse and rode to San Rafael.
“Got your smugglers, Sonny. Watched them unload from a ship and haul twenty packages to Sausalito. They went behind this restaurant,” handing Pope a scrap of paper with the name.
Pope and his grandfather went straight to the district attorney. He went with them to the judge on duty and they secured a search warrant.
Pope knew darkness was falling shortly. He took a deputy coming on night shift and they rode down to Sausalito. Horses tied down the street, Pope and deputy, Will Nickels, found a good place to watch and set up surveillance from a hundred feet away. Nothing happened during the night.
Knowing the contraband was still intact, they watched for the manager and a couple of employees to arrive.
Pope sent Nickels around back in case there was a runner.
Pope knocked on the locked door. The manager came and Pope showed him the search warrant.
He pushed through the three men and headed for the storeroom. Before he got to the door, he heard a revolver cock.
Pope ducked to the side and spun to face the noise. He saw one of the men his grandfather described aiming an old Colt converted to cartridges at where he had been.
Pope drew and fired before the man could re-aim.
Off balance, Pope’s shot hit the man in the shoulder. He dropped the gun and went down. The other two froze.
Nickels kicked in the back door and came in, revolver at the ready. They restrained the two men and let the wounded one lay for a minute.
The bundled contraband appeared to be hashish for the illicit hookah dens in San Francisco and a large amount of heroin.
Pope arrested the two and had them carry the wounded man out the front door. Pope guarded them while Nickels went for a doctor and the chief deputy. Later, he sent Howell an advisement telegram about the arrest and the contraband.
The next day, Detective Lieutenant Howell arrived from San Francisco. He had a US attorney and two deputy marshals in tow.
“Hey, Boss!” Pope greeted his old mentor. “What’s with the cavalry here?” he asked Howell.
“Looks like you broke up something big. The customs folks and US Attorney Bey here
have been trying to catch these fellas for a while.”
Bey shook hands and introduced the two deputies.
“Sheriff, have you arrested these men?” Bey asked.
“Only for custodial purposes. I have not specified a particular crime pending searching the restaurant where we found them when serving a search warrant. One tried to get funny and he’s recovering at the doc’s office. We don’t have a hospital in the county yet.”
“We might have to re-arrest them on federal charges.”
“Go ahead, but I’m still sworn as a deputy US marshal,” Pope said.
“To whom? The Northern District of California US Marshal?” Bey asked.
“Nossir. To Attorney General Brewster.”
“What? How did he swear you?”
“I was a special investigator for him on an attempted assassination of the president. He asked me to keep the badge and stay sworn in case he needed me for another case.”
Pope reached into his wallet and showed Bey his badge and warrant as deputy marshal.
“Well, I guess we don’t have to re-arrest them. Just specify the charges of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and importing without customs stamps.
Did you get a look at the ship?”
“No, my grandfather did. We have been watching the coast for a month or so now based on a tip about suspicious activities on the beach. He said it was a small steam powered ship. Maybe one hundred fifty feet in length.”
“Would your office be interested in helping us get the ship?” Bey asked.
“We sure would. But how?”
“If we could offer a deal to get these men to talk, we could find out the next delivery and get them to set it up. I can have a Navy ship standing by out of sight up the beach and when the men hit the beach with the next load, we could disable their small boat and fire a flare to alert the naval vessel to come and intercept the smuggler’s ship.”
“I believe I could disable the wooden rowing vessel with some bow shots with a couple of buffalo guns. Then, you could fire a flare, and the marshals and my deputies could move in on the men stranded on the beach.
“I think we have a plan, assuming these Tong members will rat out their friends. I have found they are pretty loyal to their organization. Loyal so their family members won’t be raped and executed in front of them,” Bey said.
Pope took the party to the jail and full charges were made. Then hours of questioning, threatening and cajoling followed.
By the end of the day, the prisoners broke, and a plan was set to fake a telegram to the distributor and have the ship return early.
“We are good except for one thing,” Bey told Pope.
“We cannot trust the prisoners to serve as pickups. But we don’t have any Chinese deputies.”
Pope had an idea based on Sarah’s recantation of the Black Bart case.
“Go ahead and set it up. I will take care of the Chinese part.”
He telegraphed Harry Morse and told him he needed Detective Lee. Pope then tapped Howell who he knew had access to several Chinese patrolmen he could recruit. They had four smuggler impersonators on call after an hour of telegraphing. Pope thought how much easier the Washington phones were for matters like this. There were a few phones in San Francisco, but none connected with San Rafael.
The telegram was sent to have another drug run made sooner due to “extremely high sales”.
The response was for the run to occur at the same beach four days later. Little time was left to put the final touches on the operations plan.
A hitch appeared when the US Navy did not have a ship it could send in time. The US Revenue Cutter Service, which was operated as an anti-smuggling marine agency anyway, had a Revenue Cutter, the US Grant in San Francisco. The Grant had bark rigged masts and large steam engine. It could go thirteen miles per hour under power. The hundred sixty-three-foot cutter carried seven officers and thirty-four enlisted men. It had four twenty-four-pound howitzers and could outrun the smuggler’s vessel or sink it, if needed.
Pope was excited. This was going to be fun. He made Israel a special deputy and asked him to bring his Sharps Big Fifty buffalo rifle. It was the same .50-90 caliber model as fellow mountain man Billy Dixon had used to drop an Indian chief seven eights of a mile away. Dixon made this shot at the Battle of Adobe Wall in Texas during a siege of the trading post. Dixon fired his nine years before the two Popes planned theirs.
The night before, Howell showed up with several detectives and three Chinese police officers. Bey and his deputy marshals came. Harry Morse came with Detective Lee.
Bey and Pope briefed the men in detail. They were instructed to not discuss the operation anywhere someone could hear them and to report to the sheriff’s office at dawn. Pope rented several small carriages from the livery and Israel drove his buckboard at his grandson’s request. With luck, they would have lots of contraband and a number of prisoners.
At dawn, the men filled themselves with strong black coffee and piled into the carriages and wagons for the trip to the beach. They left Israel’s buckboard at the woods and hid the rentals in case some other smuggler familiar with the transfer showed up. The two Popes led the men down the hill carefully as the sun began to rise.
They took branches and driftwood and built a barrier to hide the lawmen.
The US Attorney stayed on top of the cliff. He had borrowed a Very pistol and three red flares to shoot to signal the Revenue Cutter. Bey climbed to the tallest point so the cutter hidden around a point could see the flare and steam towards the smuggler’s ship.
A small ship approached at nine-fifteen. Israel said it appeared to be the one he saw earlier.
Pope brought his small brass binoculars from the investigative kit in his left saddlebag. He watched as crew members loaded bags onto the small boat. Three crewmen climbed aboard, and it was winched down to the water.
As it was rowed up to the beach, Lee and the Chinese policemen, all dressed as workmen, waved at the incoming boat. They waved in a manner Israel had witnessed. The officers thought the wave must be some sort of all-clear signal.
The bow hit the beach and the crewmen jumped out and dragged it further up into the sand.
The two Popes, one with a massive single shot Sharps and the other with his fast-firing Marlin .45-70 lever action opened up. Within seconds the bow of the wooden boat was holed and wooden laps in the hull were shattered. The three would not use it to escape.
Pope handed the Marlin to his grandfather and led a couple of his deputies and the deputy marshals from behind the makeshift barrier, guns out. The Chinese officers pulled their revolvers. Soon the three smugglers from the ship were surrounded.
Bey fired the Very pistol at the Popes’ first shots. A red meteor flare soared high into the blue sky.
The ship offshore was building a head of steam to leave the three crewmen to their fates.
Then, the sleek US Grant Revenue Cutter came around the point at full speed. It veered seaward to intersect the ship. The ship began to run.
The men on the shore saw a waterspout appear off the ship’s port bow. Several seconds later, they heard the concussion.
The Grant had fired a warning shot with one of its twenty-four-pound howitzers. The boat gave no intent of stopping and the next shot took off the smokestack.
The men on the beach cheered, except for the terrified crewmen.
A fire started on the ship. The Grant came alongside and shot heavy streams of water on the ship to quell the flames and save both lives and evidence.
Pope watched through his binoculars, then handed them to Israel. A boarding party was gathering the captain and crew and handcuffing them at gunpoint.
The fire knocked down, the smuggler ship was taken under tow and the cutter pulled it around Golden Gate Point and towards the Port of San Francisco.
US Attorney Bey and his marshals wanted to be there as soon as possible to search the ship and question the captain and crew.
“Sheriff, would yo
u hold these prisoners for me? Don’t question them, just feed them and keep them locked up. I will send the deputies back to pick them up as soon as possible.
“Thank you for your help. Your office will get full credit in our reports and probably the news rags. We will drop off one carriage at the livery before getting on the San Francisco ferry.”
The federal men left and Howell, Lee and the San Francisco officers left in another carriage, also promising to drop it at the livery.
Israel Pope slid his Big Fifty into the bed of the buckboard and grinned at his grandson and the deputies.
“Boys, we saw some action here today unlike any I can think about. The cutter chasing the ship, sending a round across its bow…the fools didn’t stop and the next one hit them in the breadbasket! I’ve never seen such a thing! Don’t suppose I ever will again.”
“Grandpa is right. I’d like to add how proud I was of you today. You upheld the finest tradition of the Marin County Sheriff’s Office. I believe we will find we participated in bringing down a very major smuggling operation. Most use wagons, these people used a ship. A lot of money was behind this. These people will talk. The entry level crooks might not know much, but the captain of the ship sure will. Very few people will go to prison for somebody else. We have only seen the tip of the tail of this cougar.
“Let’s ride into town and dinner is on me. You, too, Grandpa. There are mountain man tales these fellas have not heard yet.”
They rode in. There was a new sheriff in town, and he was stirring things up.
Pope let the US attorney handle his case, and his deputies and Howell did the interrogations and deal making.
The sheriff was happy to read in the San Francisco Chronicle about the case as it developed. The US attorney was clearly politicking. He brought some others he thought might be helpful along. One was Pope. Pope got a lot of press, mostly good.
The case proved to be one of the most major drug cases in California history up to then. The number of arrests and crime families put out of business was surprising even to Pope and Detective Lieutenant Howell. It was gratifying to them it was across all ethnic lines.
Shooting For Justice Page 21
