Butch and Sundance: One More Brazen Holdup

Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

We're in the middle of a series about two of America's most famous and successful outlaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In the last post we learned that the railroad was still willing to make a deal with Butch to stop the costly robberies of their trains.

But the boys were up to no good and obviously weren't interested in negotiating anymore. They were having a good old time stealing a bloody fortune from the banks and railroads.

Money talks

What's amazing to me is that apparently the railroads were so wealthy and powerful that they were able to offer amnesty to Butch and his gang regardless of the law enforcement system and what they wanted!

I mean Butch and Sundance alone were wanted in at least four states..Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico...probably Montana too.

So we have to assume that one industry had the clout to give them a legitimate amnesty deal, that just blows my mind! These guys had wanted posters out everywhere, the amount had grown to $5,000:

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A daring robbery

It had just been three weeks since their last hold up of the Union Pacific train in Tipton, Utah. Now Butch, Sundance and William "News" Carver are at a saloon in Winnemucca, Nevada. They had parked their horses in an alley behind the First National Bank of Winnemucca.

After a shot or two of whiskey they left the saloon and sauntered nonchalantly(they were good at that nonchalantly stuff) to the bank. Carver had a Winchester rifle and stayed at the front door, Butch drew his Colt 45 and Sundance drew out his two 45's.

Too bad we don't have a front view of the bank but this is what the town looked like in this photo from 1905. The bank is the one story brick building on the left just beyond the trees and wagon:

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Five customers were in the bank and were ordered to line up facing the wall with their hands up. Sundance guarded them. Butch told the teller to open the safe door and then Butch filled sacks with gold coins and cash. They then ordered the five customers out the back door into the fenced backyard.

Their horses were on the other side of the fence so Butch and News climbed over while Sundance kept his guns on the customers. After warning them not to move, Sundance vaulted over the fence as well and the three rode into the main street and spurred their horses.

Another perfect job

The main teller was able to get on shot off(epic fail) and one of the customers managed to grab a shotgun and fired a shot but that did nothing except blow a window out of the saloon! lol.

Of course, Butch used his patented tactic of using fresh horses along the escape route and they vanished into a wilderness area along the Idaho and Nevada border.

There were posses of course but after searching for over a week in the area they reckoned that the boys were long gone and they gave up.

A glimpse into Butch's character

An interesting story about this robbery is that the boys camped at a ranch a ways from town for a few days and became friends with the rancher and especially with a 10 year old boy who really liked Butch.

It is so typical for anyone dealing with Butch to really like the guy and enjoy his company because he was gregarious and funny. He was especially great with kids.

So anyway this 10 year old boy, Vic Button, really was taken with Butch and his super fast, white horse. Before they left for town Butch told him that the horse would be his someday. Well, that ranch was one of their stations where they had fresh horses waiting and when they got there Butch instructed a ranch hand to give Vic his white horse as a gift.

In later interviews Vic said "For a man, when he was crowded by a posse, to remember his promise to a kid..makes you think he could not have been all bad."

In your face

What's interesting about this robbery is that the boys didn't care if they were recognized or not because they didn't wear masks! I see it as openly taunting the banks. Of course, after these two jobs the banks and railroads were furious and increased the bounty to $10,000!

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The boys made off with $32,640 which has a value of almost one million dollars in today's money. So they were rich again.

Their story continues in the next post.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy Texas
the gentleman redneck

PS- ya know...you might just be a redneck if:

Your truck is taller than your house!