Reconstruction, Expansion, and the Triumph of Industrial Capitalism 49escape. He even spent a dollar [a large sum for an industrial worker in the
1880s] on a library card so he could read pulp novels about people like Jesse
James, a bank and train robber, killer, and legendary figure from Missouri. In
1882, at the age of fourteen, Longabaugh began his adventure westward when
he went to work on his cousin’s ranch in Colorado. He soon established a
reputation as a well-respected cowboy across Montana and Wyoming. But a
horrible blizzard in 1887 changed that, as it dumped 100 feet of snow on the
western plains, killed 90 percent of the livestock in Wyoming, and put the
cowboys out of work. Longabaugh turned to petty crime to survive. He was
not initially as talented at thievery as Cassidy, though, and wound up in jail in
Sundance, Wyoming for stealing horses. After serving his yearlong sentence,
he left jail with a new nickname: Sundance Kid. The Sundance Kid quickly
found himself a fugitive after sloppily robbing a train in late November 1892.
During the hold-up, the Kid, probably drunk, let the bandana over his face
fall. Not even a day later, wanted posters with a drawing of Sundance and a
$500 reward offer were plastered across the West. He fled into the wilderness,
hiding along rivers and in canyons and mountains along a 1,500-mile stretch
of hideouts known as “The Outlaw Trail” that reached from Montana to New
Mexico. While hiding in an area of The Outlaw Trail called Browns Park in
Colorado, Sundance met the infamous Butch Cassidy. They quickly took to
each other and Sundance joined Cassidy and his group of around twenty out-
laws known as the Wild Bunch [and sometimes called the “Hole-In-The-Wall
Gang”].
Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and the rest of the Wild Bunch took off robbing
banks, railroads, and mining companies across the West. With each robbery
the Wild Bunch gained support from local allies, and national fame. Workers
across the U.S. extolled the Wild Bunch because they too were the enemies
of the industrial elites who got wealthy by exploiting them. Economic divi-
sion ran deep during American industrialization, and many admired the fact
that the bandits stole from the rich. Local people who were being pushed off
their ranches by corporate cattle barons, for example, helped these modern
“Robin Hoods” as they made their way up and down The Outlaw Trail.
Locals provided the men with fresh horses and food. Butch and Sundance
left their allies gold pieces for their help—often enough so that they could
keep their land for a bit longer. With local support, the gang successfully
robbed a bank in Montpelier, Idaho in 1896, the Butte County Bank in Belle