Butch Cassidy (6 page)

Butch Cassidy gradually became determined that he was not going to be pushed around by those who tended to abuse their power and office. Many of Butch’s friends felt the same way, and in time these companions who thought and acted alike banded together and often discussed ways in which they might thwart the influence of the powerful corporations and landholders. They gradually moved out of town and often camped together in the foothills of the nearby mountains. Residents of the area began referring to them as “that wild bunch from Brown’s Park.” Cassidy and his companions eventually became known throughout the region as the Wild Bunch.

According to writer Burroughs, the Wild Bunch was “wild without other purpose or direction than that dictated by the whim of the moment, their appetites, or their sense of humor.” In truth, they were a generally good-natured group of ne’er-do-wells who occasionally gambled, drank, and stole horses and cattle from time to time.

In spite of the “gang” appellation, Butch Cassidy and his friends, though mostly mischievous and boisterous and certainly not beyond rustling livestock from a big rancher, were neither malicious nor violent. On occasion, Cassidy helped out ranchers who couldn’t afford to hire hands, helped them pay their taxes, bought Christmas presents for children, chopped wood and carried water for widows, and helped many a starving rancher pay off his mortgage. A statement often attributed to Josie Bassett was that “Butch took care of more poor people than FDR, and with no red tape.”

Stories emerged from time to time about cattle being stolen from some of the large herds in the vicinity, and though most suspected the Wild Bunch, no evidence ever surfaced linking them to the thefts. From time to time following a major cattle theft, the Wild Bunch would ride into Rock Springs and spend the evening drinking in one of the saloons and spending money freely.

This nucleus of rustlers and, in some cases, mostly idealistic young men would eventually grow into one of the most feared gangs of train and bank robbers in the United States. Most of them would be wanted for their crimes throughout much of the American West.

Five

Prison

During the early 1890s, an incident took place that reinforced and solidified Butch Cassidy’s attitudes toward wealth, power, and the law, and placed his feet firmly on the outlaw trail.

Around 1890, Cassidy took a job with the EA Ranch in west-central Wyoming’s Wind River country between the town of Lander and the Wind River. The owner was Eugenio Amoretti, an Italian immigrant. Needing men to take care of his immense herd of cattle—over forty thousand—Amoretti hired, among others, Butch Cassidy. Amoretti and Cassidy would become good friends during the ensuing years.

At about the same time Cassidy went to work for the EA outfit, Amoretti hired another young man named Al Hainer (sometimes spelled Hainey). As with Elzy Lay, Butch and Al became good friends and, at one point, in 1891 or 1892, they decided to file together for a homestead at Horse Creek near the Wind River in Fremont County. Here, the two friends constructed a log cabin on the banks of the creek and gradually established a fine herd of horses.

While Cassidy and Hainer were living on the homestead, Deputy Sheriff Bob Caverly noted that the two men were often seen selling horses but were never known to purchase any. Suspecting they were stealing their stock, Caverly kept an eye on the newcomers. In spite of his efforts, he was never able to prove anything.

Because of his gregarious ways and his obvious and occasionally marketable skills with livestock, Butch became well known to most of the Wind River area ranchers and residents. Popular with the neighbors, he was often invited to dances and other gatherings at various homes throughout the region. As in Brown’s Park, Butch grew to like his neighbors and proved himself to be a good neighbor as well.

During the extremely cold and brutal winter of 1892–1893, ranching in the Wind River region came to a near standstill. To compound the problems, a severe flu epidemic spread across the region, striking down normally strong and healthy men and rendering them bedridden. On those occasions when Butch heard of a neighbor who was too sick to work, he would travel to the ranch and perform necessary chores, generally remaining until the sickness passed and the rancher was able to return to his work.

John and Margaret Simpson were Cassidy’s neighbors. Margaret often treated sick neighbors with her concoctions of herbal medicines. When the weather was so bad that Margaret was unable to deliver her medicines, Butch carried them to those who needed them the worst. Margaret Simpson once stated that Butch Cassidy “saved more than one life” as a result of his efforts. According to Lula Parker Betenson, “When [Butch] was around, the water buckets were always full and the wood box running over.”

While Butch proved himself a valuable member of the Wind River community, he continued to ride with the Wild Bunch as well as rustle cattle and steal horses from the wealthy and powerful.

Wyoming resident Ada Calvert was a young girl when Butch Cassidy lived in that part of the country. She once recalled that he was a boisterous sort of lad but always good-natured and good-humored. She also stated that, when members of the Wild Bunch got out of control, it was always Butch who talked to them and set them straight.

Once, near Baggs, Wyoming, located close to the Colorado border, Butch and the Wild Bunch stole thirty horses belonging to Kirk Calvert, Ada’s father. One of Ada’s brothers started to raise a posse to go after the horse thieves, but Calvert talked them out of it. Months later, Calvert received payment for the horses from Butch Cassidy.

While working and rustling his way around Wyoming and Colorado, the always charming Butch Cassidy remained a favorite of the young girls. He loved to dance and court the women. According to all accounts he always remained a gentleman, always courteous and always considerate.

A woman named Dora Lamorreaux was very close to Cassidy during this time. Those who knew the couple were convinced the two were quite serious about one another, and most believed they intended to marry. Rarely were they seen apart except when Cassidy was performing his chores. During his free time, the two often went horseback riding, dancing, and even to church. Lamorreaux characterized Cassidy as a “gentleman.”

Apparently unable to find comfort with just one woman, Cassidy also courted and became good friends with the half-Indian Mary Boyd around the same time he was squiring Dora Lamorreaux. Researchers suggest that Butch became enamored of Boyd, even more than he was of Lamorreaux, and may even have expressed a desire to marry her and settle down. According to Boyd’s granddaughter, Ione Manning, as reported by Larry Pointer, Mary may have actually lived with Cassidy for a time. In 1892, Boyd gave birth to a daughter, a child who was conceived in August 1891.

Some Cassidy researchers contend that the baby was Cassidy’s, but substantial evidence is lacking. Around the time of the birth, Cassidy was arrested for horse theft. As Mary was an unwed mother, the baby was eventually given to Boyd’s Indian relatives and named Mary B’Hat. When she was older, Mary B’Hat was told by her relatives that her father was a Lander businessman her mother “became infatuated with.” Mary Boyd subsequently married O. E. Rhodes, a Lander cowboy, while Butch Cassidy was serving a prison term in the Wyoming State Penitentiary.

The Wild Bunch found the pickings good in the southern Wyoming and northern Colorado region, and during the next several months a lot of horses and cattle were discovered missing from the large ranches in the area.

Though he stole livestock with impunity, Butch was not insensitive to the misfortune and misery of others. Once, when the Little Snake River flooded and jeopardized Calvert’s store at Baggs, Butch and several members of the Wild Bunch forded the swift current and offered their help.

Though he spent a good deal of time stealing livestock, Butch Cassidy is seldom identified as a rustler—more often he was credited with being a bank and train robber. The banks and trains were to come later; most of Cassidy’s formative outlaw years were spent stealing cattle and horses from the large corporate ranches. Several of the ranchers attempted to hire Cassidy. Even though he possessed a growing reputation as a rustler, it was well known that he would never steal from an employer. Most of the ranchers were convinced they would rather have Cassidy working for them than against them.

Some have considered that Cassidy’s rustling was done more out of amusement and boyish devilment as opposed to pure malicious intent. Perhaps Butch Cassidy felt he was exacting some sort of revenge on the moneyed and powerful. For every misdeed he was involved with, however, someone had something good to say about Cassidy when it came to helping out his fellow man.

It was inevitable that Butch Cassidy would eventually be caught. During August 1891, Cassidy, most likely accompanied by Al Hainer, was residing at a location called Mail Camp in Fremont County, Wyoming, when a young man named Billy Nutcher rode in with a string of three saddle horses—a brown, a grey, and a sorrel. When Cassidy inquired, Nutcher said the horses were for sale, and the two dickered over a price for a time. Eventually, Cassidy bought all three, and the two shook hands on the deal. Unfortunately for Cassidy, none of the appropriate paperwork for the three horses was provided.

As it turned out, Billy Nutcher, like Butch Cassidy, was a horse thief, and the three mounts he sold had recently been stolen by him from the nearby Grey Bull Cattle Company. After Cassidy had been reported in possession of the stolen stock, Deputy Sheriff Caverly went after him. According to writer John Rolfe Burroughs (
Where the Old West Stayed Young
), on April 8, 1892, some ten months after the transaction, Caverly finally overtook Cassidy, and the two allegedly engaged in a brief gunfight. There exist a variety of versions about what transpired. According to an article in the
Fremont Clipper
on April 15, 1892, Cassidy refused to be arrested. At that point, Caverly “grappled with him and after a desperate struggle in which the desperado was beaten senseless, and the cuffs and shackles were applied to his limbs, he was conveyed to the prison at Evanston.”

In the June 16, 1939, issue of the
Wyoming State Tribune
, a letter written by Caverly was published in which he described the confrontation with Cassidy. Caverly wrote that, after he informed the outlaw he had a warrant for his arrest, Cassidy suggested they “get to shooting,” and the two men pulled their guns. According to John Rolfe Burroughs, Caverly said he placed “the barrel of my revolver almost to his stomach, but it missed three times but owing to the fact that there was another man between us, he failed to hit me. The fourth time I snapped the gun it went off and the bullet hit him in the upper part of the forehead and felled him.”

Ultimately, the result was that Cassidy was grazed in the head by a bullet and rendered unconscious. By the time he regained his senses, he had been handcuffed and formally arrested.

On July 15, 1892 (some sources say July 16), Butch Cassidy and Al Hainer were both charged with stealing a horse valued at forty dollars. They pled not guilty and were placed in jail, with Butch being booked under the name George Cassidy. A short time later, the two men hired lawyers Douglas A. Preston and C. E. Rathbone to defend them.

Cassidy and Hainer were subsequently released on a $400 bond and appeared in court in June of the following year. On June 22, 1893, both men were found not guilty of the crime of horse theft. On June 19, however, another charge of stealing a horse was filed against Cassidy and Hainer. The complaint charged the two with stealing a horse from a Richard Ashworth (sometimes reported as Ainsworth) two years earlier. Ashworth, who was from Great Britain, was the owner of the Grey Bull Cattle Company. Cassidy’s friend, Douglas Preston, served as an attorney for the defense once again.

On July 4, 1894, a verdict was delivered that found Butch Cassidy “guilty of horse stealing, as charged in the information, and we find the value of the property stolen to be $5.00.” Al Hainer was found not guilty. Attorney Preston filed an appeal, but it was denied. Cassidy was subsequently sentenced on July 10 by Judge Jesse Knight to serve two years of hard labor at the Wyoming State Penitentiary at Laramie. The maximum penalty was ten years.

Following the sentencing, Cassidy and Hainer separated, never to be reunited. After having time to consider the circumstances of his sentencing, Cassidy eventually became convinced that Hainer bargained with the court, providing, or perhaps manufacturing, evidence that led to the guilty verdict in return for his freedom. Cassidy also ultimately came to believe he had been set up by the cattle barons and that Hainer was involved in the plot.

Butch Cassidy was delivered by Fremont County sheriff Charles Stough to the prison on July 15 in the back of an open wagon along with five other men. Stough was accompanied by his deputy Harry Logue and Lander constable Henry Boedeker. Cassidy was the only prisoner who was not shackled, and when a prison official asked why, Boedeker explained that Cassidy was the only one who could be trusted not to escape.

He was admitted into the prison as George “Butch” Cassidy, convict number 187. Over the years biographers, using only prison records, have often applied the first name “George” to the famous outlaw, either claiming or suggesting it was his real first name. Not wishing to visit the shame and embarrassment of his misdeeds and sentencing onto his family, Cassidy found it easy to lie to prison officials about his name when his admission form was filled out. He also told them he was from New York City, that his parents were unknown, that he did not know the whereabouts of any living relatives, and that he had no religion. He was listed as being five feet nine inches in height.

In prison, Cassidy was well behaved and worked hard. He had several opportunities to participate in escape attempts but declined. The notion has been advanced that Cassidy learned a lot about criminal activity while imprisoned. Although he was a convicted horse thief, he was incarcerated with a number of others who were serving time for horse and cattle rustling. Furthermore, it has been suspected that fellow inmate John Worley, a former railroad employee, schooled Cassidy in the rudiments of train robbery.

Ironically, another of Cassidy’s fellow prisoners was Billy Nutcher, the young man who “sold” Cassidy the very horse he was charged with stealing. Nutcher was also serving time for horse theft.

Cassidy proved to be no trouble whatsoever to prison authorities, and after eighteen months he was called before Wyoming governor W. A. Richards to discuss an early release. The following story may be apocryphal, but according to writer Betenson, the governor confessed to being under some pressure from some of the state’s leading cattlemen—they were not looking forward to the day Cassidy was released from prison. They feared that a man with his leadership abilities as well as his penchant for and success in rustling cattle boded ill for the future. The governor, apparently at the urging of several ranchers, agreed to release Cassidy early if the outlaw would consent to not ever bother Wyoming’s cattlemen again.

Cassidy readily agreed to the proposition. When Richards asked him why he was so willing to make such a bargain, Cassidy allegedly told him straightforwardly that cattle and horse theft was “just too slow a way to get rich.” He told the governor that when you need money, you should go where it is. When the governor inquired of the soon-to-be released prisoner where that would be, Cassidy reportedly replied, “In banks.” Before the interview was over, however, the clearly concerned Richards exacted a promise from Cassidy that, in addition to Wyoming’s cattlemen, he would leave the banks alone, too.