The Man Who Fell from the Sky (24 page)

This is a work of fiction, although I have endeavored to convey a sense of Butch Cassidy from the research I did into his life and times. With few exceptions, Butch's story conveyed here is drawn from historical sources. For the purposes of the plot, I have taken the following detours from the historical record:

Butch is believed to have buried a part of his stolen treasure near South Pass City in the Wind River range, southeast of Lander. For the purposes of the plot, I had him bury the treasure near Bull Lake on the Wind River Reservation. In my story, he left behind a map, but there is no record that he may have done so.

Mary Boyd is a historical figure who had an ongoing relationship with Butch Cassidy in the early 1890s. At one point she referred to herself as Butch's “commons-law-wife” [
sic
]. She was half white and half Indian, from the Wind River Reservation, although
the historical record is not clear whether she was Shoshone or Arapaho. She may have been both. She gave birth to a daughter in 1892 and gave the child to an Arapaho family to raise. Since she was involved with Butch at the time the child was conceived, Butch may have been the father. But he never recognized the child, and it is possible that Mary never told him about the child. Instead, she named an anonymous man in Lander as the father. Mary married a rancher by the name of Ol. E. Rhodes (a name that would fit in a Western cartoon.) Again, for the purposes of the story, I have given Mary a fictitious first husband—Jesse Lyons, who exists only in my imagination. Which is also the case for Charlotte Hanson and Julia Marks.

As far as I know, no one has ever found Butch's buried treasure, which doesn't keep people from looking.

Whether Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were gunned down in Bolivia has been argued by historians since 1908 when the shoot-out occurred in the small town of San Vicente. The Pinkerton Agency, which prided itself on always getting their man, had followed Butch and Sundance all the way to Bolivia. The agency did not believe the outlaws died there, and they never closed the case. People who knew Butch well during his sojourn in the area of the Wind River Reservation believed that he returned several times in the 1920s and 1930s to visit old friends. In 1934 he took a camping trip into the mountains with several close friends, including Mary Boyd, then a widow. It is hard to imagine that folks who had been close to Butch—and in Mary's case, had had an intimate relationship with him—over a period of years could have been taken in by an impostor.

On the other hand, it is hard to let go of our legends. We want them to live on. And Butch Cassidy was a legend.

*   *   *

THERE ARE DOZENS
of books and hundreds of articles on Butch Cassidy. I read as many as possible. The books I found most helpful were:
The Last Outlaws,
by Thom Hatch;
In Search of Butch Cassidy,
by Larry Pointer;
Butch Cassidy, My Uncle,
by Bill Betenson;
Butch Cassidy, A Biography,
by Richard Patterson;
Butch Cassidy in Fremont County,
by A. F. C. Greene; and the especially helpful
Butch Cassidy: Beyond the Grave,
by W. C.
Jameson.

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