It was the best of outlaws, it was the worst of outlaws, it was the age of train robberies, it was the age of posses, it was the spring of cowboys, it was the winter of gunfights, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to fortune, we were all going direct to dust.
In 1866 just after the Civil War, there was born in the Utah territory a boy named Robert Parker. A rapscallion from youth, Parker dropped out of school to work the ranchlands where he honed his skills with lasso, brand, and horse. The wild-spirited lad soon gained the moniker “Butch Cassidy” from his errant ways. Not long after, a kindred spirit arrived in the West when Harry Longabaugh, later “Sundance Kid”, drifted into Wyoming in search of adventure.
Butch Cassidy had by then befriended a ranch hand and aspiring outlaw named Elzy Lay. In 1889, after years of casual crime, the duo committed their first train robbery near Wilcox, Wyoming. Escaping into the wilds with their plunder, Butch saw endless possibility ahead to outfox the Pinkerton men commissioned to hunt him down. With Sundance soon joining the gang, their most audacious years were ahead.
From their hideaway called Hole-in-the-Wall, Cassidy, Sundance, and their motley “Wild Bunch” spent the 1890s robbing across the Rocky Mountain west with impunity. Clever Butch always had a new plan to target trains and banks where the money flowed. Sundance provided the gunfire when lawmen interrupted their missions. Try as authorities did, the gang evaded capture time and again, finding refuge in the mountains they knew by heart.
As the century turned, though, the frontier was disappearing. Posses improved with telephone and railroad access, growing ever nearer to the Wild Bunch’s heels. Feeling the law’s noose tighten, Butch longed to escape to a fresher frontier. In 1901, he and Sundance fled America for Argentina, determined to take up their old ways in South America’s expanses.
But the past followed like a shadow. After robbing a mine payroll in 1905, Pinkerton agents tracked them to Chile where a raid nearly killed the duo. After more robberies proved fruitless, Butch and Sundance retreated to a ranch in Bolivia and promised to go straight. Sadly, the law found them in 1908 and felled the famous friends in a hail of bullets, their legend immutable.
In life, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbed trains to the tune of over $200,000, while evading capture from the best lawmen the Old West had to offer. But by 1911, the last of their Wild Bunch were killed or jailed. Their frontier no longer existed, vanishing as quickly as Butch galloping into the sunset. Though brief, their heyday endures in memory eternal. For they lived and laughed and adventured in the waning days of the unfenced West, leaving legend in their wake. As the British writer Dickens said, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness. But for Butch and Sundance, it was always the season of brotherhood until the end.
