Featuring Dee Stickland Johnson, winner of the Medallion Award.

The robbery of the Florence-Globe stagecoach, May 30, 1899 at Cane Springs Canyon watering hole near the Riverside Station was the last stagecoach robbery in the nation.

I thought I was rugged,
    I thought I was rough,
I thought I was tougher--
    much tougher than tough.
More likely just stupid,
    I have to admit,
For devising the crime that,
    in fact, I'd commit.

But the stupidest thing
    that I did in my life
Was to marry Frank Hart.
    I, the dutiful wife,
Whom he beat and he battered
    He cursed and he swore.
He deserted me often.
    I'd come back for more.

I was raised for a lady,
    religious and schooled,
Through no fault of my mother's,
    I turned out a fool.
I took up with that gambler,
    decided to run
to dry Arizona--
   snakes, scorpions, sun!

He followed and found me,
    I went back of course.
He treated me not quite as well
    as his horse.
Then, two children later,
    he pulled his last prank;
Became a Rough Rider --
    'twas the last of old Frank.

Back home to my mother
    I sent the two tykes,
Went out with some miners
    expecting a strike.
I started in working
    as laundress and cook.
Lived in a tent
    and hard work undertook.

But the mine proved a bust,
   and one handsome galoot
Said, "Let's leave together!"
    His name was Joe Boot.
We headed for Globe,
    but the mine soon closed down,
So we worked on Joe's claim
    quite a piece from the town.

We picked and we shoveled,
    but never found ore.
When I got discouraged,
    down came even more
Of what I call trouble--
    a letter arrived-
I must hurry home
    to see mother alive.

Whence cometh the money
    for fare on the train?
That's when I trusted
    old Joe Boot again.
It sounded exciting.
    It sounded like fun.
Robbing a stagecoach
    and wielding a gun.

So we up and did it.
    The papers went wild.
A man and a woman--
    or was it a child?
Had held up the Globe-Benson stage
    at Cane Springs
And robbed its three clients
     with no arguing.

About four hundred dollars
   is all that we got--
And a little of that
    I returned on the spot,
So our victims got supper
    and bed for the night.
took two of their guns
    and prepared for our flight.

We were headed for Benson
    to catch a fast train
Eastbound to freedom--
    but bad luck again!
We wandered around
    and soon lost our way,
and were caught while we slept.
    I guess crime doesn't pay!¹

Well, I was acquitted
    in less than ten minutes:²
Then by judge rearrested,
    seemed I couldn't win it.
As I couldn't be tried for the holdup again,
     the theft
of the stage driver's gun
   was my sin!

So for that I was given
    five years in the pen
People cried,
    "Pearl, would you do it again?"
"Damn right!" I hollered.
    "I'm dangerous and dirty!"
(I got only five. Poor Joe, he got thirty.)

Some called me a trollop,
    some even said whore:
Yet one called me virtuous, pretty
    and more.
Some said I was bad, and some said
    I was good--
A "symbol of modern
    wild west womanhood."

Some called me a dope fiend,
    some called me a drunk;
Some "a diminutive lady
    with courage and spunk".
But it makes little difference,
    for all I've been through
And by now, does it matter?
    I leave it to you.³

But when people ask who
    the stage coaches robbed,
" 'Twas Pearl Hart" you tell them,
    who pulled the last job.

                Dee Strickland Johnson
                     copyright© 2006

_________________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes-

1. They were sharing a cave with a bear, whose foul smell had driven them to the entrance of the lair.

2. In the days when women were few in the west, they could often get away (sometimes literally) with murder. Taking a note from the suffrage movement, Pearl is reported to have said, "I shall not consent to be tried under a law in which my sex had no voice in making." She was, however.

3. Pearl was twenty-eight years old at the time of the robbery. She had served nearly three years (most of it as the first female inmate of the infamous territorial prison at Yuma) before being paroled- some say because he was pregnant. To the knowledge of the warden only three males had been with her without supervision- Governor Alexander O. Brodie, Yuma's leading clergyman, and presumably, himself. She returned to her (now healthy) mother in Kansas City and a sister who had written a play, "The Arizona Bandit" in which Pearl was to have the starring role. During her imprisonment, she enjoyed telling (and embellishing) her story and posing for pictures brandishing guns and dressed in men's clothing- which she preferred to the prison uniform made for her by a seamstress brought in by the warden's wife. Joe Boot was made a trusty and, having served less than two years of his sentence, one day walked away, never to be heard from again. After Joe's escape Pearl began to write poetry and to dress in attractive female attire. Little is known of her life after parole. Several stories suggest that she moved back to Arizona where she remarried and lived the rest of her quiet life as housewife in Globe.


                                                    BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aikman, Duncan. Calamity Jane and the Lady Wildcats.
    NY: H. Holt and Co., 2927, 57-63.
Banks, Leo W. Stalwart Women: Frontier stories of Indomitable Spirit.
     Phoenix: Arizona Transportation Department, 1999, 71.
Brown, Wynne. More Than Petticoats.
     Guilford, CT and Helena, MT: The Globe Pequot Press, 2003, 46-57.

N.B. The footnotes and Bibliography (above) were compiled by Dee Strickland Johnson and appear in her book, "Arizona Women- Weird, Wild, and Wonderful".

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