50 ChaPter^1
Fourche, South Dakota in 1897, and the Pleasant Valley Coal Company in
Castle Gate, Utah that same year. In 1899 Cassidy and the Kid held up a train
outside of Wilcox, Wyoming along the Union Pacific Railroad, owned by
Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the wealthiest, most powerful, and
ruthless of the oligarchs. The gang separated the passenger cars before filling
the engine car that carried the safe with dynamite. Unlike Jesse James, for
instance, the Wild Bunch never shot a single person in any of their robberies.
The explosives blew the train car high into the air, sending cash, banknotes,
and gold coins everywhere. They made off with approximately $50,000 [over
$1 million in today’s money].
Although ordinary people praised the gang, railroad executives, mine own-
ers, large cattle operators, and wealthy bankers hated them and wanted to
destroy Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Like the Wild Bunch, the
capitalists had their own allies: the Pinkertons. After the 1899 train robbery,
the chairman of the board of the Union Pacific called upon them for help.
Together they waged an all-out attack on the Wild Bunch. Functioning as
the capitalists’ own private police force, over 100 Pinkerton detectives arrived
in Wyoming in less than a day after the train robbery. They kept elaborate
files on Wild Bunch members, including details such as how the men parted
their hair. They also used advanced techniques for the time and tracked the
serial numbers on the stolen banknotes. The banknotes surfaced in towns
throughout the West, giving away the bandits’ escape paths. The first one
caught was Lonnie Logan in Montana, who the Pinkertons gunned down.
Butch, Sundance, and a few members of the Wild Bunch fled to Fort Worth,
Texas, to the red light district of Hell’s Half-Acre. They blended in among
the cowboys, prostitutes, gamblers, and saloons. Cassidy was exhausted from
the constant threat against his life and began to talk about fleeing to Argentina,
a place where many ranchers purchased cattle. Some American cowboys had
already decided to settle in Argentina because it felt more like the Old West
than the heavily industrialized New West. But Cassidy was soon forced to
run again after a local photographer, who had snapped a photo of Cassidy,
Sundance, and three other members of the Wild Bunch, inadvertently gave
away the fugitives’ location. The man had put the photo in his shop window
as a way to advertise his skills as a photographer. A local policeman, how-
ever, saw the photo, and told the Pinkertons. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid were on the run again.