Hi, Everyone;
Especially those of you who love to read, as I do. I spent years researching Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch and came up with some interesting, little-known facts.
Would it surprise you to learn that Butch and the Sundance Kid weren't best friends until 1899 when Butch's best buddy, Elzy Lay, was sentenced to life in prison for a Texas train robbery? The following year Harry "Sundance Kid" Longabaugh and his companion, Etta Place, left for South America in 1900. Two years later Butch Cassidy bought a remote ranch in Argentina and the three of them lived there until 1905, when they returned to a South American life of crime.
And the Sundance Kid was not the happy-go-lucky guy portrayed in the film, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." He was well educated, arrogant and surly.
Were the two outlaws killed in Bolivia as historians would have us believe, or did they return to this country to live out their lives?
My new book, ESCAPE: A Wyoming Historical Novel tells what actually happened to all the Wild Bunch members as well as weaving the story of a young woman disguised as a 12-year-old boy, who is kidnapped by Wild Bunch members and taken to the Hole in the Wall outlaw hideout in Wyoming's remote Big Horn Mountains. There she manages to hide her identity while eavesdropping on the outlaw's plans to rob the Belle Fourche (South Dakota) Bank. Bungling, alcoholic horse thief Tom "Peep" O'Day causes the outlaws to botch the robbery and eventually face jail terms, until they escape. The novel is generously sprinkled with humor.
