BUTCH, SUNDANCE, AND THE CLOSING OF THE WILD WEST.
Robbers Roost and the Hole in the Wall
BANDIT HEAVEN by Tom Clavin. The Hole-In-The-Wall Gangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West.
Hello from Flagstaff! And a big Welcome to the many new followers of Reading Off the Beaten Path! Great to have more readers!
BANDIT HEAVEN is a breezy and highly entertaining book about the colorful characters who made the frontier West so wild. It's about both outlaws and the lawmen who chased them, and ultimately focuses on the exploits of Hollywood heroes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Bandit Heaven refers to the very remote geographical area of Utah and Wyoming which included the notorious hideouts of Brown’s Hole, Robbers Roost, and the legendary Hole in the Wall. This is an easy reading book, very conversational in style, packed with action of the outlaw West.
Tom Clavin is the prolific western writer of over 20 books (!!!) on such topics as Wild Bill Hickock, Tombstone, Arizona, the Dalton Gang, the Texas Rangers, and Daniel Boone. He also had a hand in the terrific seek-and-destroy story, To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth, about the perilous Civil War hunt for the South's most feared battleship. I reviewed that epic read over a year ago, Here. Tom Clavin can spin a good tale, and he's at his best when he's talking about bandits and lawmen.
Bandit Heaven starts in the 1860s, right after the Civil War. Before focusing on Butch and Sundance, we meet several other outlaws who used Robbers Roost and the Hole in the Wall. We meet Kid Curry (he’s not the Sundance Kid), a ruthless killer, and Black Jack Ketchum. It’s the time of Wanted posters and shady sheriffs. Who’s after the bad guys? Most often, it’s the amazing Pinkertons and their top western detective, Charlie Siringo. Pinkerton detectives apparently broke all the rules, made their own laws, and assumed secret identities. They’d ride into a town and blend into the landscape as cowhands or merchants. Once an area was infiltrated, they’d gather information. (Charlie was likely the model used in the timeless movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. We all remember the lawman who wore the white skimmer hat, relentlessly on the heels of Butch and Sundance.) This book makes us wonder, was Charlie Siringo a top Pinkerton detective? Or a sneaky two-faced double agent, willing to lie and cheat anybody to get information which led to a bounty?
Clavin provides vignettes and anecdotes of the Wild West outlaws, their gangs and hideouts. While crooks came and went from the gangs, most of the characters were tied one way or another to Butch. He was the mastermind behind most of the great train robberies of the era, And we get a terrific sense for the difficulties and obstacles faced by both crooks and law enforcers. Butch Cassidy, (real name Robert Leroy Parker) and the Sundance kid, (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh) provide the most fascination. Clavin tracks them through their youth, and then their greatest robberies. Butch was a truly gifted strategist in planning a heist. He left no stone unturned on the execution of a robbery, and the escape. (Before a robbery, he'd hide packs of horses along his escape route so his men always had fresh horses, able to outrun any pursuers.) Also, his hideouts like Robbers Roost and Hole in the Wall were remote and dangerous places, fortress-like, easy to protect.
But these are the dying days of the outlaw West. By the 1890’s it's tougher to rob banks and trains for many reasons. There’re simply more people moving out West. Law enforcement and the incredible Pinkertons post rewards, and bounties become common. Everybody has their eyes and ears open. Communications improve quickly, there’s the Telegraph, trains, better roads and transportation. As the Dalton Gang and Jesse James could attest, it simply got harder to be a crook. Populations grew and there were fewer places to hide.
Nobody felt these pressures more than Butch Cassidy. By all accounts many aspects of the Hollywood movie are accurate: Butch, Sundance and Etta do go to New York City and throw money and caution to the wind. She follows them for years. But as the law closes in, they go to live in South America. There, they become ranchers in southern Argentina. But that's not appealing and doesn't work out for many reasons, and the relatively primitive South American banks look like easy targets. What happens? Do two American’s in South America stand out? Clavin lays out the mystery and offers all the theories. Were Butch and Sundance killed? Was their secret ranchers’ life in Patagonia discovered? Did they turn to thievery again, drifting back and forth to Bolivia to rob banks? Or did they slip back into the United States and live out their days in an anonymity in Utah?
You read BANDIT HEAVEN to learn about cattle rustlers, thieves, bank robbers, killers, and the lawmen who chased them. You read this book to learn about the Wild West in the 1880s, when more and more people are pouring in, and the hideouts aren't so hidden anymore, not even for the most ruthless killers. Ultimately you read this book because it's a wistful or even melancholy tale about the end of the Wild West, an era coming to a close, and the fading of our oddly romantic images of outlaws, six-shooters and posses chasing crooks into the badlands. This is a book where the pages turn and there's never a dull moment. It's a fun western history that gives a great taste of both sides of the law. And if you’re like me, you’ll want to learn more about what truly happened to Butch and Sundance in South America. Here’s the Amazon link.
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From time to time Reading off the Beaten Path reports on the world of food. We write about cooking, (After all, I've written a Series which reached Number One on Amazon, about a 13-year-old genius Chef.) So I was excited to read about the very recent papal election, the Vatican Conclave, and see thew question: What do the Cardinals eat? We don’t really know, of course, because during a Conclave, secrecy is at the utmost. Nobody goes in or out. Over the centuries the code of conduct surrounding the secret votes has been protected with iron fists. Legends of treachery abound and incredible care is taken to protect the secrecy … they worried that a Cardinal might conceal an update on a vote inside a dirty napkin! Accordingly, rituals are in place in the kitchens, with strict protocols and even specially trained guards who keep an eye on irregularities in pie crusts or loaves of bread!
In modern times, the protocols have slackened. Most recently, the cooking is done by highly trained nuns. So what do the Cardinals eat during a Conclave? Spaghetti, minestrone, veggies, lamb skewers. Here's a good article about Papal cookery within a Conclave.
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Thw World’s Most Expensive Cheese?
It’s Pule Cheese, from the Balkans. $1,700 a pound.
Made from donkey’s milk. Learn about Donkey-milk cheese here.
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Finally, what do the following words all have in common: Dulcet, Elixir, Halcyon, Harbinger, Lithe, Inglenook, and Ratatouille? Answer is, they're all among the 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English language. No idea how this was compiled, but it’s no doubt an important one if you’re a writer. And as for a reader, whether they know it or not, these words will lead to a subliminal pleasure within ones’ brain. Here's the whole list of 100.
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For the newbies, I'm a novelist living in Arizona, currently working on my 8th book. Two of my works have reached #1 in several different categories on Amazon. I write strong stories with ordinary characters who face various challenges, leading to some turbulence within their moral compasses. Award-winning and high-concept fiction, clean and for all ages. Please learn about all my work on my website. www.MICHAELDASWICK.com
Thank you for reading. Likes and shares are always appreciated.
MD in AZ