A different sort of instinct for Americana was evident in the Sierra Nevada where 100 years ago, a poetastering highwayman named Black Bart used to rob stagecoaches and leave behind such doggerel as:
I've labored long and hard for bread, For honor and for riches, But on my corns too long you've tred, You fine-haired sons of bitches.
One day a fortnight ago in Sacramento, a black-bearded man boarded one of the dozens of Greyhound buses that shuttle gamblers daily from California to the casinos on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. Half an hour out of Sacramento, the man shoved a pistol...
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