The Bandit Bard

How the English-born, Civil War veteran’s career as America’s most prolific poet-stagecoach robber began on the backroads of California’s gold country. In San Francisco, Charley Boles became a new man. No longer was he a farmer in hobnailed boots, a rifleman in a muddy uniform or a gold hunter in a shabby miner’s frock. He suddenly began dressing in the height of fashion, sporting a salt-and-pepper wool suit with double-breasted coat, a silk tie with gold stickpin and a diamond ring on