American scoundrels, William N. Roach,

Laramore, Dakota Territory, summer of 1879.

A man stepped off the Northern Pacific Rail line into a town that barely qualified as one,

a scattering of unpainted storefronts, a land office, and a whole

lot of nothing stretching to the horizon in every direction. William Nathaniel Roach was 38 years old,

Georgetown educated, and freshly arrived from Washington, D.C., where he had recently been employed

as cashier of the Citizens Bank. He carried with him a modest trunk, a talent for bookkeeping,

and a secret that would have landed him in a federal penitentiary

had he stayed east one week longer.

Roach had stolen $60,000, not from a till, not in a back alley holdup.

He had done it the way educated men do it, from behind

a desk in a starched collar with a pen and an understanding of which columns nobody checked

twice. As cashier of the Citizens Bank of Washington, Roach had systematically looted the institution's

accounts over a period the precise length of which the historical record leaves murky.

What is not murky is the sum.

$60,000 in the late 1870s was a fortune, enough to buy a small town outright, which, as it happened, was more or less what Roach intended to do.

The depositors whose money he took

were ordinary Washingtonians who trusted the bank and the man behind its counter. When the

shortage was discovered, Roach reportedly returned the funds to avoid prosecution. The bank,

preferring silence to scandal, accepted the money and let the matter drop. No charges, no newspaper notice, just a quiet understanding between a thief and the institution he had robbed, sealed with the returned cash and a handshake that smelled like kerosene. Roach packed his bags and pointed himself toward the emptiest place on the map he could find.

Dakota Territory in 1879 was a country for men with pasts.

Homesteaders, speculators, drifters, and a fair number of people whose reasons for leaving

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