A CIRCLE OF light fell over the stacks of papers, notebooks, and laptop that littered the surface of the desk. At the edge of light stood the chair Father John kept for parishioners who tracked him to the residence. The notes of “Vesti la giubba” rose and fell against the nighttime creaks and groans of the old house. The bishop had gone upstairs to bed an hour ago. Walks-On snoring at his feet, twitching in a dream. A good time, the last, quiet minutes of the day.
Father John tried to ignore the tiredness running through him. It had been a busy day, driving to the nursing home and the film set, having lunch at the senior center with some of the elders, visiting the sick, the dying, at the hospital in Riverton, driving, driving. Walks-On had either trailed along on the visits or slept in the pickup under a shady tree.
Following him through the day were thoughts of the man who had once lived in the same area—ridden a horse along the trails that were now asphalt roads, and who might have returned, when everyone thought he was dead. Risen from the dead. He smiled. It had happened only once.
Father John turned the desk lamp toward the bookcases and ran his finger over the spines of Western history books until he found what he was looking for. Outlaws and Other Legends. A clear imprint outlined by dust clung to the shelf when he removed the book. It must have weighed two pounds; the cover, a tooled, navy blue leather, the title printed in gold. He ran his fingers over the cover a moment, then opened the book carefully. A delicate thing, like film that might disintegrate in his hands. The end sheets were cream-colored, stamped with tiny light blue half circles. He thumbed through the heavy, ragged-edged pages: desperate, narrow-eyed men looked out from sepia-toned photographs. Then he turned to the table of contents. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid appeared halfway down the list. He turned to page 70.
The photograph of Butch Cassidy smiling out at the world took up the top half of the page, light-colored hair slicked back from an open, friendly face, eyes deep set, amused yet watchful, full cheeks and square jaw. In his thirties, hard-driven, experienced. The caption read: Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy, about 1899.
On the lower half of the page was the photo of another man, smaller and slimmer, also in his thirties, but with black hair and dark complexion and the wary eyes of a man who had seen and absorbed too much. Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, the caption read, known as the Sundance Kid, about 1904.
He turned the page and found a photo of five men in suits and ties, black fedoras, and polished shoes, a successful bunch of merchants or bankers, perhaps, photographed at a wedding. Except the caption identified the men as members of the Wild Bunch. Butch Cassidy and Sundance were seated in front, on either side of Ben Kilpatrick. Behind them stood Will Carver and Harvey Logan. A tiny smile played around Butch’s mouth, as if he were the only one in on a highly amusing joke.
On the opposite page were crowded lines of black type that ran into narrow margins. Father John skimmed through the text, then turned to the next page and the next. Looking for the dates, the details that grounded a life. Butch Cassidy, born Robert LeRoy Parker in Utah in 1866. Large Mormon family, honest and hardworking, so Butch changed his name to spare them the embarrassment and heartbreak at the turn his life had taken. Rustled cattle and horses at first, and Butch was good at it. Bank robberies came next, more dangerous and more lucrative. The San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride, the Denver National Bank, and more robberies whenever a bank looked promising. Then the train robberies, the big payoffs, $50,000 or more at a crack, more than a man could make in a lifetime of ranching. Often he hid out with friends in Wyoming. He was generous with the money he had stolen, helping friends pay taxes and mortgages to save their ranches.
And Butch Cassidy was a man of meticulous planning. He planned the bank robberies and the train robberies by working out every detail. He left nothing to chance.
Still, at times, Butch had tried to leave the outlaw life behind. Homesteaded a ranch north of Dubois, Wyoming, about 1890. Became part of the community, another rancher at the carry-in dinners, a dancing partner for the single girls. Handsome and fun-loving, popular with everybody. Always willing to lend a hand on the neighboring ranches. It lasted almost two years, those normal days, until the lure of horses waiting to be rustled became too strong to resist. Arrested for rustling a horse in the Bighorn Basin, which he claimed he had purchased legitimately, and sentenced in 1894 to two years in the Wyoming penitentiary in Laramie. Released in January 1896.
Father John skimmed the next page: How Butch went back to robbing banks. Idaho, Utah, South Dakota. How Harry Alonzo Longabaugh joined the Wild Bunch sometime in the 1890s. How the gang was hardly a gang, forming and reforming, taking in new outlaws as others rode off. Then, halfway down the page, Father John stopped skimming and read the text:
On June 2, 1899, the gang turned to robbing trains. As the Union Pacific Overland Limited Number 1 thundered down track near Wilcox, Wyoming, an emergency lantern swung ahead. The engineer stopped the train and the gang rode out of the shadows. They ordered the train crew to cut off the baggage and express cars and move them across a bridge ahead. Using the new explosive, dynamite, they blew up the bridge first, then proceeded to blow up the express mail car and the safe. No one was killed. They rode north with $50,000 in gold, silver, and banknotes.
Butch Cassidy himself did not take part in the actual robbery, but he had planned the event and the getaway route. He rendezvoused with the gang nearby, and they divided the loot and went their separate ways. It is believed that Cassidy and Sundance hid out for a time on a nearby ranch with friends Butch had made in his ranching days.
The Wilcox robbery led to the largest manhunt in Wyoming history. One hundred men—posses, state militia, private citizens, and Pinkerton detectives hired by the Union Pacific—rode across the state, but the gang had disappeared into the wide, empty spaces of the West. Posse leaders believed the gang had gone to Brown’s Park, a narrow, remote valley on the Utah-Colorado border controlled by outlaws. The posses gave up. No one wanted to venture into Brown’s Park.
Father John skimmed the following page on how Butch had tried to leave the outlaw life behind. Petitioned the Wyoming governor for a pardon on the condition that he would join the Rough Riders and go to Cuba to fight in the Spanish-American War. The governor refused. Still other attempts to clear his record and live a lawful life. A possible deal with the Union Pacific. In exchange for a pardon, he would work for the railroad and provide security against outlaws like himself. But negotiations went no further, and in 1900, Cassidy and the gang robbed another Union Pacific train west of Rawlins.
Cassidy’s friends in the Lander area claimed that Butch and Sundance were tired of being hunted and eager to start a different life. In 1901, they went to South America, where they reside today. However, they remain outlaws in the United States and should they return, they will still face justice.
Father John went back to the front of the book and read: Printed 1907. New York City.
He closed the book, set it back on the shelf, and went into the kitchen. The old wooden floors sighed under his boots. He made a pot of fresh coffee, measuring out the grounds, pouring in the water, his thoughts with the man looking out of the sepia photo. Smiling and friendly, well liked in these parts, generous with whatever money he had. The book confirmed—at least it didn’t deny—everything he’d heard so far. Butch had helped local ranchers, and they helped him. Provided safe places for him to hide after the robberies.
He filled the dog’s water bowl—the tap of paws coming down the hall breaking into his thoughts. Walks-On looked sleepy, a little disoriented as he lapped up the water. Father John poured himself some coffee, stirred in a little milk, and went back to the study.
It took a moment for the laptop to find its bearings and click into life. Eventually Web sites on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid materialized. He glanced down the first couple of screens and clicked on the headline: Did Butch and Sundance Die in Bolivia?
Generally historians accept that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had robbed the Aramayo mine payroll in Bolivia on November 4, 1908, and fled to the small town of San Vicente. A small military detachment surrounded the house where they were hiding. The shoot-out lasted for hours, and when it ended, two bodies were found inside the house, mortally wounded. The bodies were buried in unmarked graves.
The end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Wyoming friends of Butch Cassidy who had known him well do not believe that he died in Bolivia. In the 1920s and 1930s, these friends maintain that Butch visited the area several times. He went by the name William T. Phillips, but the people around Lander and the Wind River Reservation recognized their old friend, whom they had known as George Cassidy, and who had, at long last, made a life on the right side of the law in Spokane, Washington. On one visit, Butch and a group of friends took a camping trip into the mountains, where Butch spent several days looking for treasure he had buried after the Wilcox train robbery.
Historians argue about the accuracy of such stories. Many believe that Butch and Sundance could not have escaped the hail of bullets they encountered in Bolivia and that the Wyoming visitor was an impostor. But Butch’s friends in Wyoming never faltered in their belief that their old friend had returned. Indeed, their stories raise the question: could an impostor convince a dozen or more people he was someone they had known well?
Reports of the Sundance Kid in Mexico after 1908 suggest that he also survived. But there are no reports of him in Wyoming.
So what is the truth? Did Butch Cassidy return to Wyoming, as his friends said, or did he and Sundance die in Bolivia? Perhaps the point is that the past yields only some of its secrets, never all.
Father John closed the site, then opened several others. On two sites, Butch Cassidy smiled out at him again from the same sepia photograph, but now something new in the deep-set eyes that Father John hadn’t detected before, a mocking look. Find me, if you dare.
The other sites reiterated the information: the shoot-out in Bolivia, the emergence of a man who visited Butch’s old friends in Wyoming. And in the third site, a mention of Mary Boyd:
Butch Cassidy courted any number of women in Wyoming, but he seemed most attached to Mary Boyd, who was half Indian. In 1892 she gave birth to a daughter. Unmarried and unable to care for the infant, Mary placed her with an Arapaho family on the Wind River Reservation. Some historians believe the child was Butch Cassidy’s and that Mary hoped he would marry her and take care of her and the child. Instead Butch was arrested for horse stealing and sentenced to prison. After his release, he left the area. Mary married a rancher named Jesse Lyons. They did not have children. Mary never publicly named the father of her daughter.
Father John shut down the computer and watched the screen go dark. Walks-On was dreaming, making little mewling noises. The internet sites confirmed the stories, the pieces of the past he had heard. Eldon Lone Bear had said that if Butch Cassidy left behind a map, there was only one person he would have left it with: Mary Boyd. One of her descendants was still on the rez. Living at the White Pines Nursing Home. And her name was Julia Marks. The generations of stories she must have heard about Butch and Mary and a map, all of it locked in her mind.