Blair took a break that winter and spent several weeks visiting family and friends in Maine. When he returned to Nevada in February 1877, Wells Fargo presented him with a gold watch “for faithful and resolute attention to the company’s interests.” Only a few weeks later, he shined again during Carlow and Crawford’s ill-fated attempt on the Eureka-to-Pioche stage. That August, Blair’s adversary was a driver named Condon, not a road agent. Sharing the driver’s seat for long hours at a time did not always engender congenial relations, and the two men came to blows at Shackles Station. “Condon got worsted,” according to one account.

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In September 1877, “Big Jack” Davis, a veteran train and stage robber, planned to hit a stage guarded by Blair. Back in 1867, Davis had been prosecuted for holding up the Eureka stage but had gotten off, allegedly by buying off the jury. On November 4, 1870, he had participated in the first train robbery on the West Coast, taking $50,000 from the Overland Express at Verdi, Nev. Captured after that historic crime, Davis had served in prison until pardoned in 1875.

Now Big Jack was back in action, with help from three others—ex-convicts Thomas Lauria and Bob Hamilton, as well as Bob’s brother Bill. The plan called for Lauria to watch the stages leaving Eureka. If a messenger was aboard, suggesting a worthwhile prize, Lauria was to gallop to a nearby summit and light a signal fire. On seeing the smoke, the other gang members were to ride to Willows Station, 40 miles south of Eureka, capture the station handlers and await the stage.

On September 3, 1877, Lauria was surprised to see two messengers climb aboard a Tybo stage. He rushed off to alert his colleagues and, according to some accounts, built two signal fires—however, the fires were so close together, his cohorts mistook them for a single blaze. Davis and the others promptly descended on Willows Station, tying up the stockman and blacksmith and threatening instant death should they utter a sound. The outlaws then unharnessed the horses prepared for the incoming stage, barricaded a corner of a stable and readied an ax for use in opening the strongbox. They even had time to prepare and eat a meal.

Around 9 p.m. the stage pulled into Willows Station. Jack Perry was driving, Blair and Jimmie Brown were guarding the box, and two passengers sat inside the coach. As soon as the stage halted, a voice called from the darkness, “Eugene Blair, get off that stage and surrender.” Blair didn’t budge—he thought one of the station men had gotten drunk and was playing a prank. But when the command came again more forcefully, Blair started to climb down, shotgun in hand. As he did so, according to the September 5 issue of the Eureka Daily Republican, “he was greeted by a double discharge of shotguns, one from the rear of the stage and the other from the corner of the stable, both passing so near his head that the powder of one warmed his face.”

Blair, partially blinded by the gun smoke, shot wide. An instant later, he felt the cold muzzle of a gun against his chest. “Blair,” the newspaper reported, “caught and chucked it aside and turned the robber, who was pulling the wrong trigger, half round, when Brown, on the seat, watching his opportunity, raised his shotgun as quick as a flash and gave the road agent the full contents of one barrel square in the back, and he fell over mortally wounded, loaded with eight buckshot. Almost simultaneously with this deadly shot, Blair had placed his shotgun squarely against the fellow’s breast, and would have blown a hole threw [sic] him as big as the moon had not his brave companion performed the action. Brown, after firing the shot, jumped from the stage but had not hardly reached the ground when he was shot in the calf of his left leg, inflicting a painful but not serious wound. The other two robbers then fired four more shots, at the messenger at close range with shotgun and revolvers, none of which, however, done any harm, though they came uncomfortably close, and disappeared in the darkness.”

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