Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas! We are in a series about two of America's most famous outlaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Yesterday we talked about the women of the Wild Bunch and what the attraction was for women to throw in with cold-blooded killers and thieves. Today we get back to the boys. In 1898 Butch, Sundance and Elzy left their women in Utah and rode to New Mexico where they hired on as regular ranch hands.
My opinion of this move is that they were actually just providing a cover for their criminal activities or else they would have taken the women with them. They hired on as cowboys with a large ranch and started working. Well, of course the owner was super impressed with their skill and knowledge and especially with Butch and his natural leadership abilities.
The train robberies start
It wasn't long before the rancher made Butch his foreman. It also wasn't long before train robberies started happening. Mysterious ain't it? In the first robbery since arriving in New Mexico, two men jumped on board a train as it was moving out of the station at 1:30am.
They boarded at the back of the tender car and made their way up to the engine compartment, holding up the engineer and fireman with their six shooters. The robbers told the engineer to stop at the mile marker ahead. Another member of the gang was waiting there with the get away horses.
The engineer stopped the train at the mile marker and the robbers took them back to the express car which held the safe. The rear brakeman got suspicious when the train stopped for no reason so he jumped off the car and ran back to town to send a telegraph to the nearest Sheriff which was ten miles away.
Dynamite's a powerful motivator
When the robbers got to the express car, the messenger or guard inside, refused to open the locked door. One of the robbers threw a lit stick of dynamite off to the rear of the train and after that warning blast the engineer told the messenger to open the door, which he did.
The outlaws then put a second stick of dynamite on top of the safe, lit the fuse and everyone ran for cover. The roof of the car blew off and the inside of the car destroyed but the safe was open. The outlaws grabbed $26,000 in cash and jewelry, jumped off the car and swung into the saddles of their waiting horses.
And check this out..here's what the car looked like after they got through with it, those Pinkerton boys were not amused!
Oh, they also took the time to stop, thank, and shake the hands of the railroad employees before they left the car! lol. Plus, they were wearing bags on their boots so they wouldn't leave any boot prints.
The perfect job
The Sheriff in the next town was headed there by way of another train but by the time he got there the boys were long gone. A posse went out but had no chance of catching them.
You KNOW this had to be a Butch Cassidy planned job. The members pulling this off were Sundance, Harvey Logan and George "Flatnose" Currie. Butch was going about his everyday duties as ranch foreman.
In this photo taken around this time are some of the Wild Bunch members. Standing in back is "News" Carver and Harvey Logan, Harvey is on the right and was in on the train robbery. In front from left to right is Sundance, the Tall Texan Ben Kilpatrick and Butch Cassidy.
$26,000 back then was the equivalent to almost $800,000 today! Not bad for ten minutes of work. An interesting note about this photo...it turned out to be one of the few but one of the biggest mistakes Butch ever made, was having this photo taken. The guys were in Fort Worth because News was getting married to Lillie Davis who was a working girl at Fannie Porter's cat house.
Since they were all fancied up in their best clothes for the wedding Butch thought it would be good to have a photo taken. The owner of the shop was so pleased with it that he displayed it in his window. Well, someone in law enforcement walked by one day shortly after and recognized Harvey Logan.
Not brilliant
He went into the shop and ordered 300 copies and those were distributed to sheriffs, detectives and of course the Pinkertons all over the country. As soon as the rest of the group were identified they had their first accurate photos of most of the core of the gang and what they currently looked like.
This photo would be used for years in identifying these members and was spread to every law office in the nation. It was a rare mistake to have it taken but a huge one because now everyone in law enforcement knew exactly what they looked like.
In the next post the boys pull off another spectacular train robbery but the Pinkertons start swarming.
Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy Texas
the gentleman redneck
PS- ya know...you might just be a redneck if:
None of your shirts cover your stomach!
