Under Cover for Wells Fargo: The Unvarnished Recollections of Fred Dodge

by Fred Dodge

These are the remarkable memoirs of Fred Dodge (1854-1938), Wells Fargo secret agent for fifty years, friend of Wyatt Earp, and fast man with a gun. Here are dozens of his cases -- stage robberies, train holdups, long pursuits through the badlands, even suits against Wells Fargo for "delay to a corpse" and the bite of a vicious horse. In Under Cover for Wells Fargo his "unvarnished recollections" are preserved and carefully edited by Carolyn Lake, who discovered Dodge's journals among Smart N. Lake's papers, awaiting a biography that was never written. Fred Dodge was a dead ringer for Morgan Earp, and this led to his early acquaintance with the famous brothers, for when he got off the stagecoach in Tombstone in 1879, Wyatt and Virgil promptly checked on the stranger who looked so much like Morgan. In those days Dodge was posing as a gambler, and even Wyatt did not know that he was a Wells Fargo agent. Dodge sheds much light on the Earps in Tombstone and on how he teamed up with Heck Thomas to hunt down outlaws in Kansas and Oklahoma, including Bill Doolin's gang and the Dalton brothers.

Genres: History, Westerns

Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Tina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a recounting of the personal diaries of Fred Dodge from 1891 - 1918. They are a time capsule of the wild west era and one man's work as a detective for Wells Fargo. It was a dry read and didn't capture my attention as I had hoped. Unless you are an aficionado of the days of Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, I wouldn't recommend this book.