Category:

PROLOGUE

The train station in Wilcox that served the Union Pacific line was in the southern half of Wyoming, ninety-five miles west of Cheyenne. Early in the morning on June 2, 1899, a gang that newspaper accounts had christened the Wild Bunch planned to rob the Overland Flyer No. 1 as it approached the station.

And that was what happened—-but not exactly as the perpetrators planned.

It was 2:18 a.m. when W. R. Jones, the train's engineer, spotted a man standing beside the tracks waving a red lantern. For a moment, Jones, who had earned the nickname "Grindstone" because of his serious work ethic, hesitated. Bandits were known to do this as a trick to get a train to stop unnecessarily. But if there was a legitimate reason to stop, such as track damage ahead, and the engineer did not, the result could be catastrophic. Jones was not one to take chances.

He ordered the train to halt. For the right reason, he made the wrong decision. But it turned out not to matter. He would have stopped the train anyway when he caught sight of the man crawling over the coal tender and into the engine compartment. He held a pistol pointed at Grindstone. This was infinitely more persuasive than a lantern of any color.

To emphasize that, the man said, "Do what I say, you son of a bitch, or I will put light through you." Grindstone would later learn that the bandit was Butch Cassidy.

Immediately after the train stopped, four other men appeared trackside. One was George "Flatnose" Currie, a kick from a horse having earned him that nickname. The other three were related: Bob Lee, and his cousins, the brothers Lonie and Harvey Logan. The latter was more familiar to lawmen as Kid Curry. The man who had been swinging the lantern would be identified as Harry Longabaugh, who also had a juvenile nickname—the Sundance Kid. All six men, Grindstone noted, his dismay deepening, had long masks covering their faces, and each carried a Winchester rifle in addition to a Colt pistol.1

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1 At the time, there was a chain of restaurants that had been founded twenty-three years earlier by Fred Harvey to cater to the growing number of train passengers. Most likely, before the robbery, members of the gang had dined there because their masks were cloth napkins pilfered from a Harvey House.

The plan, so far, was working perfectly. It would soon dawn on the passengers that the train stopping short of the Wilcox station might mean a robbery was in progress, and to be on the safe side, they would stay glued to their seats. The wild card in the Wild Bunch was always Kid Curry. He had a hair-trigger temper and could be unpredictable. Cassidy had to keep him on a short rein, and usually, the Kid followed the plan.

As Cassidy had rehearsed with his crew, Grindstone Jones and his fireman were hauled down from the engine compartment and escorted along the tracks to the mail car. This was where the first deviation from the plan occurred: the men inside refused to open up. The mail car door remained fixed and locked even after Cassidy shouted that they had two hostages and the gang fired bullets into the car.

The second deviation caused even more consternation to Cassidy: the lights of another Overland Limited train came into view, traveling in the same direction. Now what?

Cassidy was not keen on giving up just yet. He ordered his men to hop back on the train, and Grindstone Jones and the fireman were pushed back up into the engine compartment. Cassidy knew this section of track and that about a mile ahead was a gully over which a bridge had recently been built. He had the train travel to the other side of it. Then, as the engine idled, billowing smoke disappearing into the dark sky, Cassidy ran back to the bridge. A minute later, an explosion of ten pounds of gunpowder turned the bridge into a precarious structure that no train should risk crossing.

Thus far, Butch Cassidy had been such a cool customer that no one would have guessed this was his very first train robbery.

Cassidy told Jones to get the train rolling again. This Jones did, but the engine struggled a bit on an upgrade. As he nervously adjusted the controls, the engineer heard one of the men say, "I'll fix you!" With that, Kid Curry clunked Jones on the head with his Colt pistol. He went to strike again, but this time, Jones deflected the blow with his hand. There would not be a third time—Cassidy told the Kid, "Calm down or you'll kill someone." So far in his criminal career, Cassidy had avoided doing that, and he did not want to start now.