spectacular bank robberies before her arrest and jail-sentence at Belleplaine, Kansas, in 1932.) In the Ashley Valley in Utah, I met an old man, rocking on his porch, who remembered Butch Cassidy in 1908. But if they did come back that summer, the pace was too hot; for by December both outlaws were in Bolivia working for a man called Siebert at the Concordia tin mine.
The classic account of their death, at San Vicente, Bolivia, in December 1909, following their theft of a mine payroll, was first set down in Elkâs Magazine for 1930 by the Western poet, Arthur Chapman. It was an ideal scenario for the movie-makers; the brave cavalry captain shot while trying to arrest the gringos; the mud-walled courtyard full of dead mules; the impossible odds; the Kid first wounded, then shot through the head by Butch, who, having now killed a man, reserves the last bullet for himself. The episode ends with the Bolivian soldiers finding Ettaâs Tiffany watch on one of the bodies.
No one knows where Chapman got the story: Butch Cassidy could have invented it himself. His aim, after all, was to âdieâ in South America and re-emerge under a new name. The shooting at San Vicente was investigated by the late President René Barrientos, Ché Guevaraâs killer, himself an ardent Western history buff. He put a team on to solving the mystery, grilled the villagers personally, exhumed corpses in the cemetery, checked the army and police files, and concluded that the whole thing was a fabrication. Nor did Pinkertons believe it. They have their own version, based on the skimpiest evidence, that the âfamily of 3â died together in a shoot-out with the Uruguayan police in 1911. Three years later they assumed Butch Cassidy deadâwhich, if he were alive, was exactly what he wanted.
âBunkum!â his friends said when they heard the stories coming out of South America. Butch didnât go in for shoot-outs. And from 1915 on, hundreds of people sawâor thought they sawâ him; running guns for Pancho Villa in Mexico; prospecting with Wyatt Earp in Alaska; touring the West in a Model T Ford; calling on old girlfriends (who remember him as gotten rather fat); or turning up at a Wild West Show in San Francisco.
I went to see the star witness to his return; his sister, Mrs Lula Parker Betenson, a forthright and energetic woman in her nineties, with a lifetime of service to the Democratic Party. She has no doubts: her brother came back and ate blueberry pie with the family at Circleville in the fall of 1925. She believes he died of pneumonia in Washington State in the late 1930s. Another version puts his death in an Eastern city, a retired railroad engineer with two married daughters.
23
N OT FAR from Cholila there was a narrow gauge railway back to Esquel. The station was a toy station. The ticket salesman had the face of a private drinker. In his office was the photo of a soft middle-class boy with slicked-down hair, wanted for murdering the Fiat executive. The railway officials wore uniforms of pale grey with gold braid. On the platform was a shrine to the Virgin of Luján, the protector of travellers.
The engine was about eighty years old, made in Germany, with a tall funnel and red wheels. In the First Class, food had worked into the upholstery and filled the carriage with the smell of yesterdayâs picnic. The Second Class was clean and bright, with slat seats, painted pea-green, and a wood stove in the middle.
A man was boiling his blue enamel maté kettle. An old lady talked to her favourite geranium, and two mountaineers from Buenos Aires sat among a heap of equipment. They were intelligent, intolerant, earned pitiful salaries and thought the absolute worst of the U.S.A. The other passengers were Araucanian Indians.
The train started with two whistles and a jerk. Ostriches bounded off the track as we passed, their feathers billowing like smoke. The mountains were grey, flickering in the
The classic account of their death, at San Vicente, Bolivia, in December 1909, following their theft of a mine payroll, was first set down in Elkâs Magazine for 1930 by the Western poet, Arthur Chapman. It was an ideal scenario for the movie-makers; the brave cavalry captain shot while trying to arrest the gringos; the mud-walled courtyard full of dead mules; the impossible odds; the Kid first wounded, then shot through the head by Butch, who, having now killed a man, reserves the last bullet for himself. The episode ends with the Bolivian soldiers finding Ettaâs Tiffany watch on one of the bodies.
No one knows where Chapman got the story: Butch Cassidy could have invented it himself. His aim, after all, was to âdieâ in South America and re-emerge under a new name. The shooting at San Vicente was investigated by the late President René Barrientos, Ché Guevaraâs killer, himself an ardent Western history buff. He put a team on to solving the mystery, grilled the villagers personally, exhumed corpses in the cemetery, checked the army and police files, and concluded that the whole thing was a fabrication. Nor did Pinkertons believe it. They have their own version, based on the skimpiest evidence, that the âfamily of 3â died together in a shoot-out with the Uruguayan police in 1911. Three years later they assumed Butch Cassidy deadâwhich, if he were alive, was exactly what he wanted.
âBunkum!â his friends said when they heard the stories coming out of South America. Butch didnât go in for shoot-outs. And from 1915 on, hundreds of people sawâor thought they sawâ him; running guns for Pancho Villa in Mexico; prospecting with Wyatt Earp in Alaska; touring the West in a Model T Ford; calling on old girlfriends (who remember him as gotten rather fat); or turning up at a Wild West Show in San Francisco.
I went to see the star witness to his return; his sister, Mrs Lula Parker Betenson, a forthright and energetic woman in her nineties, with a lifetime of service to the Democratic Party. She has no doubts: her brother came back and ate blueberry pie with the family at Circleville in the fall of 1925. She believes he died of pneumonia in Washington State in the late 1930s. Another version puts his death in an Eastern city, a retired railroad engineer with two married daughters.
23
N OT FAR from Cholila there was a narrow gauge railway back to Esquel. The station was a toy station. The ticket salesman had the face of a private drinker. In his office was the photo of a soft middle-class boy with slicked-down hair, wanted for murdering the Fiat executive. The railway officials wore uniforms of pale grey with gold braid. On the platform was a shrine to the Virgin of Luján, the protector of travellers.
The engine was about eighty years old, made in Germany, with a tall funnel and red wheels. In the First Class, food had worked into the upholstery and filled the carriage with the smell of yesterdayâs picnic. The Second Class was clean and bright, with slat seats, painted pea-green, and a wood stove in the middle.
A man was boiling his blue enamel maté kettle. An old lady talked to her favourite geranium, and two mountaineers from Buenos Aires sat among a heap of equipment. They were intelligent, intolerant, earned pitiful salaries and thought the absolute worst of the U.S.A. The other passengers were Araucanian Indians.
The train started with two whistles and a jerk. Ostriches bounded off the track as we passed, their feathers billowing like smoke. The mountains were grey, flickering in the
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