Sam Bass: The Ballad and the Man

Western Folklore, Summer 2003 by McEntire, Nancy Cassell

The surprise was so complete, however, that the posse stood between them [the outlaws] and their mounts, and the only feasible escape was into a dense thicket nearby.

Arkansas Johnson's horse was hitched to a nearby tree and Johnson went to mount him. One account had him picking up a blanket off the ground to saddle his horse when he was shot. Another account had him mounted when Tom Floyd jumped to the ground from his horse, cocked his Winchester, then turned over on his back to rest his rifle on his raised knees and fire a single shot. The bullet entered just above Johnson's left nipple and the outlaw fell instantly to the ground, dying almost immediately. (Miller 9 1999: 222)

Even though the ballad line of Jim Murphy's arrest, release on bail, and jumping bond is correct18-"Jim Murphy was arrested, and then released on bail; He jumped his bond at Tyler and then took the train for Terrell"-accounts of the traitorous acts of Jim Murphy exhibit a number of inconsistencies, mainly the result of the ballad's stereotypical depiction of recognizable signs of human weakness, such as greed. Official papers documenting Murphy's betrayal of Sam indicate that his motivation was to clear himself and his father from charges, and not, as the ballad indicates, to avoid having to return "borrowed" gold from Sam. Here the ballad text emphasizes the ignominious nature of Murphy:

Jim had borrowed Sam's good gold and didn't want to pay,

The only shot he saw was to give poor Sam away.

He sold out Sam and Barnes and left their friends to mourn-

Oh, what a scorching Jim will get when Gabriel blows his horn!

One addition to the saga of Sam Bass relates the demise of Jim Murphy, an event memorable enough to find its way into an alternate final stanza. Murphy's fate, narrated by Rick Miller, is as follows:19

Death came to Jim Murphy on Thursday, june 5, 1879, under bizarre circumstances. he suffered from an eye ailment common within the Murphy family which caused one of his eyes to have a downward cast. The treatment prescribed by Dr. Ed McMath was an eyewash with belladonna, a crude medicine derived from a plant that caused extreme dilation of the eyes but which was a narcotic poison. Murphy would go to McMath's drug store on the Denton square and lie on a cot while the wash was carefully administered to his eye so as not to get in his mouth. Murphy sat up to light a pipe and some of the drops inadvertently ran into his mouth and were swallowed. he quickly became sick, his body shaken by convulsions, and there was nothing that McMath could do to help him. Murphy was taken to a residence nearby and died that night, leaving a widow and several children. (Miller 1999:278)

John Lomax includes in his 1938 edition of Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads the following recollection of Jim Murphy's death from J. M. Thorne, Forth Worth, Texas:

I can call to memory Jim Murphy. he was near my age, for we was once schoolboys together. This Jim Murphy gave Sam and hit outfit away, and I was told by a man present in the neighborhood where Jim Murphy died that Jim contracted sore eyes because some of Sam's friends slipped deadly poison in Jim's eye medicine and caused him to die a raving maniac. (Lomax 1938:152 note)