Cassidy Butch - The Last Outlaws: The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

OTHER BOOKS BY THOM HATCH

Osceola and the Great Seminole War:
A Struggle for Justice and Freedom

Black Kettle:
The Cheyenne Chief Who Sought Peace but Found War

The Blue, the Gray, and the Red:
Indian Campaigns of the Civil War

The Custer Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to the
Life and Campaigns of George Armstrong Custer

Clashes of Cavalry: The Civil War Careers of
George Armstrong Custer and Jeb Stuart

Encyclopedia of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution

Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn:
An Encyclopedia of the People, Places, Events, Indian Culture
and Customs, Information Sources, Art and Films

The Bone Hunters: A Novel

THE LIVES AND LEGENDS OF

BUTCH CASSIDY and
THE SUNDANCE KID

THOM HATCH

New American Library

New American Library

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First published by New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, February 2013

Copyright Thom Hatch, 2013

Maps by Chris Erichsen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Hatch, Thom, 1946

The lives and legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid/by Thom Hatch.

p. cm.(The last outlaws)

ISBN: 978-1-101-59878-8

1.Cassidy, Butch, b. 1866. 2.Sundance Kid. 3.OutlawsWest (U.S.)Biography. 4.West (U.S.)Biography. I.Title.

F595.C362H38 2013

364.1550922dc23 2012031697

[B]

Designed by Spring Hoteling

PUBLISHERS NOTE

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

To my lovely and talented wife, Lynn,
and brilliant and beautiful daughter, Cimarron

C ountless influences affect a writer while working on a book, but one stands out for me. While researching and writing about these outlaw cowboys, I could not help but think about living here in Colorado cattle country, and how ranchers are still running cow-calf operations without much change since the days of Butch and Sundance. And when thinking about cattle being raised around here, I thought often about one manrancher John A. Jay Yoder.

When Jay was growing up in Kansas, he loved to read Zane Grey novels and dreamed of someday becoming a cattle rancher. In 1955, his dreams came true when he and his wife, Betty, a schoolteacher, settled on their spread in Colorado and began turning grass into beef for a living while rearing two boys.

In past years, every once in a while Jay would invite me to escape my office and spend the day cowboying with him on his ranch. We would put in a full day branding or doctoring cows with the crew, or mending fence, or breaking ice from water tanks, or going to auction, or hauling hay or cake out to pastures full of gazing cattle.

What made each of those days memorable, however, was not necessarily the cowboy work learning experience I would receive but the companionship of Jay Yoder, who would freely share with me his sage insight about lifes principles, values, and morals. His compassion, generosity, and love of family, God, and the lifestyle of the Western range became a great inspiration to me. If there ever was a man suited to proudly bear the title of American rancher and be a steward of the land, it was Jay Yoder.

To my enduring sadness, Jay passed away on August 1, 2011, at the age of eighty-six.

N ovember 4, 1908, promised to be a clear, sunny day high up on a barren pass where a creek-bed trail had been carved around the base of Huaca Huanusca (Dead Cow Hill), fifty miles north of the frontier mining town of Tupiza, Bolivia. This was a desolate place where weather-shaped cliffs soared above, a dozen shades of brown mixed with fields of brilliant green cactus among spindly, scraggly brush, and dusty winds whipped tumbleweed into motion. In this remote stretch of primitive trail, two men with their faces covered by bandannas and their rifles tightly clutched in their hands waited anxiously behind a large rock.