Sometime during 1896, Warner was hired by E. B. Coleman and Bob Swift to keep trespassers and potential claim jumpers and thieves away from their gold mining enterprise in the Uinta Mountains. Like Coleman and Swift, a trio of prospectors—Dave Milton, Dick Staunton, and Ike Staunton—was trying to locate the source of a rich mineral deposit. One afternoon, Milton and the Stauntons entered Coleman’s property and a brief gunfight resulted. By the time it was over, Milton and Dick Staunton were dead. Warner, Coleman, and another man named Bill Wall were arrested, charged with murder, and placed in the Vernal, Utah, jail.
Rumors soon spread through town that Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay were going to break Warner out of jail. Whether this was true or not, no one knows, but the fact remains that the two men showed up in Vernal a few days later. While in town, Cassidy received a message from Warner that he was desperately in need of money to hire a defense lawyer.
In the meantime, several Vernal residents, outraged at what they considered the wanton killings of Milton and Staunton, threatened to break into the jail, remove the prisoners, and hang them from the nearest tree.
Concerned about the possibility of a lynch mob, or perhaps, as some researchers maintain, that Cassidy and Lay might attempt to break the prisoners out of their cell, the authorities transferred Warner and Wall to the jail at Ogden, Utah, to await trial. Ogden was located 140 miles in a direct line to the northwest.
On learning of the circumstances of Warner’s arrest, Cassidy and Lay were convinced their friend killed only in self-defense. The two immediately turned to lawyer Douglas A. Preston and asked him to represent their companion. Preston agreed and informed Cassidy and Lay that the trial could be long and involved and that his fee would be substantial. The two friends told Preston to begin his preparations and that they would make certain he was paid. According to Lula Parker Betenson, in order to come up with the money to pay Preston, Cassidy and Lay decided to rob the bank in Montpelier, Idaho.
Montpelier was a small town located in the southeastern corner of Idaho and about one hundred miles northeast of Ogden. Originally settled by Mormons in 1865, it was supposedly named after the Vermont birthplace of church leader Brigham Young. In truth, Young was born in Wittingham, Vermont.
The subsequent location of a railroad line through the town of Montpelier brought a number of non-Mormon laborers into the area. The town, located on the side of the tracks opposite the Mormon settlement, was similar to most new and rapidly growing towns of the time in this region—saloons, gambling dens, and dance halls provided a stark contrast to the conservative religious community nearby. The growing numbers of miners, trappers, hunters, gamblers, and drummers, along with their wild ways, troubled and angered the Mormons. Tensions remained high for a time. To make things worse, the railroad eventually brought in federal authorities to enforce monogamy laws on the polygamous Mormons. Soon, Montpelier teemed with saloons, mercantiles, and dance halls. It also had a bank.
During this time Butch Cassidy established a pattern for robbery that, with some few exceptions, he was to follow throughout most of the rest of his outlaw career. Several days prior to a holdup, whether bank or train, Cassidy and his gang would arrive early and study the work schedules, the comings and goings of employees, and generally become acquainted with the personnel and their habits. Furthermore, they cached food and fresh mounts at strategic locations along the escape route, thus ensuring they would easily outdistance pursuing posses, most of which were hastily assembled and poorly equipped. During subsequent train robberies, dynamite was often employed to open up locked payroll cars and safes.
During the first week of August, Butch Cassidy, Elzy Lay, and a friend named Bub Meeks (sometimes reported as Bob Meeks) arrived in the Montpelier area and found work cutting hay at a nearby ranch. When the opportunity arose, the three rode into town and familiarized themselves with the hours and operations of the bank. Like Cassidy and Lay, Meeks was another wayward Mormon.
A few minutes past three o’clock on the afternoon of August 13, 1896, Cassidy, Lay, and Meeks rode into Montpelier and reined their horses up in front of the town’s only bank. As Meeks held the horses, Cassidy and Lay, pulling bandanas over their faces and drawing revolvers, entered the financial establishment. Once inside, they noted a pair of cashiers and three or four customers. Hardly pausing, the two men announced that a robbery was about to take place and ordered everyone to raise their hands and place their faces against a nearby wall.
Some writers insist Meeks led the three mounts to the rear of the bank, while others are just as certain he remained near the front entrance. According to author Pat Wilde, an assistant cashier named A. M. “Bud” McIntosh observed a man holding horses at the front of the bank while the robbery was in progress.
Cassidy stood near the front door and guarded the customers as Lay, pulling a canvas sack from his belt, walked behind the cashier’s cage and ordered McIntosh to place all of the bills into the sack. McIntosh told the robber there wasn’t any currency. In response, Lay called him a liar and struck him across the forehead with the barrel of his revolver. Cassidy, witnessing the incident, admonished Lay and told him not to hurt anyone. Bleeding from his wound, McIntosh emptied the bills out of his cash drawer and passed them to Lay who, in turn, stuffed them into the sack. Lay then walked into the open vault, grabbed more currency, and added it to the rest. As he prepared to return to the front of the bank, he spotted some gold coins behind the counter and hurriedly scooped them into a cloth bank bag he found nearby. After adding a few silver coins he found on McIntosh’s counter, he rejoined Cassidy near the door.
While Cassidy held his gun on the customers, Lay walked out, tied the loot to his saddles, and mounted up. Cassidy then backed out, warning those inside not to move for ten minutes.
Once outside, Cassidy vaulted onto his mount. The three outlaws rode slowly out of town trying not to arouse suspicion. Once they passed beyond the town’s limits, they spurred their horses into a gallop and fled northeast toward Montpelier Canyon. A deputy sheriff named Fred Cruickshank jumped on a bicycle and gave chase but was easily outdistanced by the robbers.
Within an hour of the holdup, a somewhat unwilling posse was formed and set out in pursuit of the outlaws. In Montpelier Canyon, Cassidy, Lay, and Meeks switched to different horses they had hidden nearby the previous day. With fresh mounts, the trio quickly outdistanced the pursuing posse, which eventually gave up and returned to town.
The following day, Cassidy, Lay, and Meeks counted the take and discovered they were considerably richer. Estimates of the robbery loot range from $7,000 to more than $30,000, with most researchers leaning toward the higher amount. The outlaws then split up. Cassidy and Lay rode straight to Douglas Preston’s office in Rock Springs and paid him a handsome advance to defend Matt Warner. Preston, a Wyoming lawyer, was not allowed to practice in Utah, so he hired two able attorneys from that state—D. N. Straupp and Orlando W. Powers.
According to legend, Butch Cassidy buried some or all of his share of the Montpelier bank loot somewhere in the Wind River Mountains. The most commonly related version of the story maintains the outlaw dug a shallow hole in some sand with the butt of his pistol, deposited the money, and covered it up. Nearby was a lightning-struck stump to which he could refer as a landmark. Several years later when the tale of outlaw-buried loot spread throughout the region, treasure hunters and hikers came to the Wind River Mountains in search of this lightning-struck stump in hopes of finding the buried loot.
Charges immediately surfaced that Preston had received payment from bank robbery money. He steadfastly denied it, claiming he had been provided an advance by friends of Warner long before the Montpelier bank was robbed. He further maintained he was not retained by Cassidy or any of his gang members.
Despite the efforts of Preston, Warner was ultimately convicted of the killing and sentenced to a five-year term in the Utah State Penitentiary. While Warner was incarcerated, Cassidy often visited his wife and provided her w
ith money until her husband was finally freed. Meeks was arrested a short time later, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for thirty-five years.
With the passage of a few months, Butch Cassidy began hanging out with a group of outlaws called the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. From time to time, these men were involved in a variety of criminal activities, and it is believed Cassidy participated in many of them.
The Hole in the Wall was a well-known hideout for outlaws in central Wyoming and was located along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains some sixty miles northwest of Casper. According to writer Gail Drago, the Hole in the Wall consisted, in part, of a “great cliff of red rock, a red wall composed of a fifty-mile sandstone ridge . . . divided only by a narrow, twisting V-shaped notch, barely wide enough for a man on horseback. The entrance to the Hole in the Wall could be easily guarded. With little difficulty, a man armed with a rifle could pick off a rider slowly making his way up the narrow, winding trail.”
The Hole in the Wall was, and still is, not a hole at all but a V-shaped notch in a high canyon rim. Even today, this region remains somewhat remote and isolated. It was these same geographic characteristics, however, that provided sanctuary to rustlers, robbers, and killers whose presence was more or less tolerated by the few ranchers and farmers scattered throughout the region. The Hole in the Wall has sometimes been referred to as the northernmost point along the so-called Outlaw Trail.
Researchers generally agree that Butch Cassidy grew to be the acknowledged leader of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, although the position was entirely informal. Occasionally, Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan served as leader, but more often than not he deferred to Cassidy when the latter was present. Cassidy, say some historians, apparently possessed natural leadership skills and appeared to get along well with practically everyone. Evidence suggests that, during the time Cassidy was in prison, the gang conducted its outlawry in a loose, careless, often bungling, and clearly leaderless manner.
According to most who have studied the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, it was considered a loose-knit and often changing association of bad men. On various occasions Dave Atkins, Will Carver, Nate Champion, Bill Cruzan, Pegleg Elliot, O. C. “Deaf Charlie” Hanks, Ben Kilpatrick, Elzy Lay, Bob Lee, Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid), Tom McCarty, Bob Meeks, Tom O’Day, Walt Punteney, Will Roberts, and Harry Tracy were members of the gang.
During this period Cassidy met Harry Longabaugh, who eventually gained a level of outlaw fame as the Sundance Kid. Longabaugh, originally from Pennsylvania, had recently arrived in the area and joined the gang of outlaws. Almost all of Longabaugh’s biographers refer to him as tall and handsome, and he was known to dress well and in the latest styles. A successful gambler, Longabaugh was also a skilled pistoleer. He was known to have killed men with his handguns. He was also a very talented horseman. These attributes, along with his short temper and latent meanness, did little to prevent him from fitting in with the rest of the outlaws.
For the most part, the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang hid out at Robber’s Roost. In Matt Warner’s autobiography, he described Robber’s Roost as “wild country. . . . The wildest kind of buttes and spires rise above the level of the mesas . . . deep, dizzy canyons.” Newspapers reported the streams held treacherous quicksand.
Warner wrote that a number of outlaws knew the advantages of hiding out at Robber’s Roost, a remote, mazelike canyon land located in southeastern Utah, roughly between Hanksville to the west and Moab to the east. There were a number of cabins in the Roost, as well as plenty of freshwater springs and graze for the horses.
It was extremely difficult to track men on the run in that rough country. Many lawmen avoided the Roost for they were simply not willing to encounter desperate outlaws in their own, easily defensible territory.
Over the years, outlaws on the run—the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang as well as others—hid out in a number of different locations in Wayne County, Utah, west of the Green River; all of the locations at one time or another were referred to as “Robber’s Roost.”
In 1896, Elzy Lay married Maude Davis. The two moved to Robber’s Roost and lived in a tent during the winter months. Nearby, living in another tent, were Harry Longabaugh and his woman, Etta Place.
While many researchers and writers are in agreement that Etta Place and Longabaugh were lovers, it has been speculated that she may have actually been Butch Cassidy’s woman, at least for a short time. In the book The Wild Bunch at Robber’s Roost by Pearl Baker, the author claims Etta Place and Butch Cassidy shared a tent. Still other researchers maintain there is no substantial evidence that the woman living in the tent with the Sundance Kid (or Butch Cassidy) at the time was Etta Place. Even today, Etta Place remains one of the American West’s most mysterious and enigmatic figures.
Sometime in the spring of 1897, the gang disbanded for a time and all moved out of Robber’s Roost. Before leaving the hideaway, however, Cassidy and Lay concocted plans to rob the payroll from the Pleasant Valley Coal Company (PVCC) at Castle Gate, Utah.
Castle Gate was located in the northeastern part of the state near Price. The town had little reason to exist save for coal. Coal mining and associated businesses dominated the economics of Castle Gate, almost to the exclusion of all others. Buildings, roads, and most of the residents of the town seemed to be perpetually covered in coal dust.
This was the setting when Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay rode into the town. Some claim they were accompanied by Bub Meeks and Joe Walker, but there is no clear consensus on this.
Cassidy and Lay worked for a short time at a nearby ranch, coming into town occasionally to investigate procedures relative to the arrival and disbursement of the payroll. Since Castle Gate was overwhelmingly a mining town, the arrival of two cowhands on horseback was a noteworthy event and attracted attention. Because attention was the last thing they wished, and because they were determined to learn the somewhat irregular and confusing payroll schedule, Cassidy and Lay decided they needed to do something that would allow them to come and go without arousing suspicion. They quickly learned that, while there were few horses in Castle Gate, horse racing was a popular activity. Fitting their mounts with racing saddles and bridles, they told anyone who inquired that they were training their horses for upcoming races in Salt Lake City. This response appeared to satisfy the curious.
The two outlaws soon learned that the train carrying the payroll arrived from Salt Lake City twice per month. To confuse would-be robbers, however, E. L. Carpenter, the paymaster for the Pleasant Valley Coal Company, never paid the workers on the same day. Instead, payday was announced by a certain blast of the mine whistle, at which time the workers would gather around PVCC headquarters to receive their wages.
When Cassidy and Lay were not watching the trains and train schedules, they were selecting locations at which to place getaway horses along the escape route. They decided it should be easy enough to take the payroll and, with the help of the relay mounts, outdistance the posse to Robber’s Roost, almost one hundred miles away. While they were making their plans to rob the payroll, Cassidy used the opportunity to get his horse accustomed to the sudden blasts of the train whistle. Because the site selected for the robbery was close to the train depot, Cassidy feared his normally skittish mount would be frightened by the noise. To prepare his getaway horse, he would regularly ride him next to locomotives as they arrived in town and approached the station.
It took Cassidy and Lay about one week to learn what they needed to know. Just before noon on Wednesday, April 21, 1897, the train carrying passengers, goods, and the company payroll was heard in the distance approaching the town. Moments later, the Denver and Rio Grande Number 2 pulled up to the loading platform next to the depot. As the passengers were stepping out of the cars, the mine whistle blew, announcing payday. Within minutes, miners and others began to gather in town in anticipation of their bimonthly pay.
Cassidy and Lay mingled with the growing throng of workers and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. Lay was on ho
rseback, holding the reins to Cassidy’s mount. Cassidy was seated, slouched on a wooden crate near the wooden stairway that led to the second-floor offices of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company in one of the town’s largest buildings. As Cassidy learned earlier, the payroll was to be delivered to this office.
With the sound of the locomotive chuffing at the depot, paymaster Carpenter, accompanied by his deputy clerk, T. W. Lewis, came out of the second-floor office, descended the stairs, and hurried over to the depot. Some reports claim he was accompanied by two clerks. After crossing the tracks and entering the station, Carpenter was greeted by the express car messenger who handed over to him a leather satchel containing currency and checks. He also passed to the paymaster three canvas sacks: one of the sacks contained gold coins, and the other two were filled with silver. The total value of the payroll, according to records, was $9,860. Carpenter carried the satchel and one sack of coins, and Lewis hoisted the remaining bags. Toting their burdens, the two men left the station, crossed back over the tracks, and headed back toward the wooden steps leading to the PVCC payroll office.
When Carpenter and Lewis were still several paces from the stairway, Butch Cassidy casually rose from his seated position and confronted them. He pulled his revolver, placed the point of the barrel within an inch of Carpenter’s face, and commanded the two men to release their parcels, raise their hands, and step away. The frightened Carpenter dropped the satchel and sack he was carrying immediately, but assistant Lewis turned and bolted toward the front door of the building, still holding onto one of the sacks of silver.
By this time, Lay had ridden up, leading the spare horse. Cassidy picked up the satchel and the two sacks of coins. He tossed the sacks to Lay, who was forced to drop the reins to Cassidy’s horse to catch them. The mount, already high strung and sensing the nervous excitement, broke away and ran down the street. Holding tightly to the two bags of silver, Lay spurred his horse in pursuit of the other, catching him about a block away. Clutching the satchel, Cassidy waved his revolver at the gathering crowd, telling them to stay where they were so no one would get hurt. He then turned and ran to meet Lay, who was leading the second horse back up the street.
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