Description: Bound pages; dated November 5th, 1908, with title: How I Came to Rob the Bank in Montpelier by Butch Cassidy. “Chapter One: In Which Matt Warner’s Most Curious Affliction, That of Being Haunted by The Old Prince of Darkness, Satan Himself, Is Relayed in Order to Account for The Amputation of His Wife’s Leg.”
Excavators Note: This remarkable, if bizarre, passage constitutes the only known attempt at an autobiography written by the infamous outlaw Butch Cassidy. Footnotes have been added to provide the context that Cassidy neglects. The rest is unaltered.
I like the story of robbing that bank. I’m not too interested in much of anything that came before. You can read about most of all that in the papers, and what you can’t isn’t worth reading. No, if I’m going to put pen to paper for anything, it’ll be the Montpelier job. For one, those were the good old days to be sure, but more importantly, it’s about old Matt Warner, who I see now got it right by going straight.[1]
Things have gone bad again. Worse than before actually, and I’m thinking that we’ll likely have to give up soon.[2]So then, when else, but on the eve of my own personal apocalypse, am I going to set any part of myself down in ink for posterity’s sake? It’s now or never.
But where to start? Well, I suppose there’s a number of good beginnings, from when I first met Matt at the races[3] to that spot of green in Dry Fork,[4] but no. It’s best to lead with how Rosa Warner lost her leg, seeing how it’ll be important later, but there isn’t really any good place to tell it except right up front.
To do that bit any justice at all though, you’ll need to know at the outset that unbeknownst everyone else, the Devil himself stalked Matt everywhere he went and always had since the night their paths first crossed. He confessed this to me alone on a cloud dabbled night in Brown’s Hole when all our fellow scoundrels lied in fitful sleep, plagued by the nightmares we earned. The ones Matt and I were up to put off.
“There,” he gestured into the abyss beyond the ember glow. “A serpent the color of lightning. Strutting about like a lion born of brimstone. Angel of light. Deceiver.”
I stared hard where he pointed. I about half fooled myself into thinking I saw the faintest shadow, a darkness in the dark, but I didn’t say nothing of it. There was cool mountain night between us, and the river hummed that it was the hour for me to listen.
Matt breathed out ghosts as he spoke, and he timed each tortured sniff to take cover beneath the fire pops. No one had ever accused him of being an honest man, but that night, I could’ve been the first.
“I was fifteen. Still using the name my mamas knew me by.[5] I was working graveyard hours for Old Jim at Diamond Mountain for the summer. It’d been quiet most every night but then this Mexican come in. Boy, did he scare Jesus out of me. We exchanged lead back and forth. Think I soiled myself, I was so afraid, but I don’t remember for sure. Finally, I shot him down.[6] Grease-black hair smeared with maroon blood. The hay-filthy floor. Reeking geldings all unsettled and whining something fierce. And him. Just out of nowhere, like he’d always been there really, Satan appeared, and that old Father of Lies never left.”
“What is it?” I asked, and I followed his eyes to where he’d said the Beast lurked.
“He’s talking to me. I try to ignore him, but it’s not always so easy.”
“What’s he saying?”
“It’s ironic. Me killing a horse thief is ironic, and he says… he says he bets I wish some kid would do the same to me. He says, I could do it myself if I weren’t so yellow-bellied. I should kill myself, he’s saying, over and over. Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself.”
Matt had been living with the Devil talking in his ear like that for ten years when he met sweet Rosa Rumel, the prettiest girl in Afton, Wyoming. He was as handsome as he’d ever be then. Sandy curls and a wiry smile. And seeing as he’d recently made a pretty penny too, he was soon a suitor in her father’s house.[7] Rosa’s cheeks warmed with girlish daydreams about our Matty, while the Devil eyed her blossoming figure and listed every sin he could inflict on her.
One September morning, Matt swept her up, and they headed to the chapel in Montpelier, just a hop and a skip across the state line into Idaho. They honeymooned one night on a Bear Lake beach, then the trail called Matt back. There was some of the old fun to be had yet. Banks were flush with gold-rushed coin notes. Rivers of fire ran wet at racket dances. Sunset after sunset ached for taking a flyer, giving a green gown, blowing the grounsils, and amorous congress. But as I’ve since learned, there’s only so long brass can shine before it blackens.
The job in Delta went all to hell. Good friends were buried, and finally, at Rosa’s relentless urging, Matt straightened up.[8] He traded Old Jim a saddle and a sturdy horse for the rights to Diamond Mountain. The old man rode off into the desert alone for the obvious reason. Matt, Rosa, Sweet Baby Joy,[9] and the Devil settled into a quiet life.
Now about Rosa’s leg. Well, you see, before I can go on, you’ll be needing to know that in all the years that I knew Matt, I never heard him tell the same story the same way twice. So, figuring out the truth behind Rosa’s amputation takes work. Hold each version up to the light, and you may still not have the foggiest idea of how it really went.
For example, it was well known that Matt was quick and severe to anger.[10] Satan’s lying tongue stirred a rage in Matt. And as it goes in one telling of the whole affair, the Serpent’s fury possessed Old Matt one day, and he thrashed a stubborn mustang with all of Hell’s wickedness flooding his mind. Kind Rosa rushed to stop him.
“You want to take the beast’s side, huh?” Matt repeated Satan’s hiss. In a tussle of tears, he fastened her ankle to the mad creature’s tail and sent it galloping.
But that’s just one telling. See, the Devils’ way of torturing Matt wasn’t all evils. In fact, Lucifer would often whip Matt up in a frenzy of ecstasy. Filling his head with glee until he felt invincible.[11] It’s been suggested that one fireside night, Matt was drunk on the Devil’s charm. He danced about, making Rosa giggle. Then, aiming to plop down on her lap, he crashed onto her knee. Her feet were up, and his weight snapped her leg clean in half.
Then again, the worst was Satan’s silence. The Devil would give Matt the cold shoulder for weeks or even months, and Matt would fall into the depths of unbearable downheartedness.[12] He wouldn’t rise from bed nor speak but to weep. Rosa would be tasked with all of everything when he got like that. In another version, she was out one blustery day, cursing her inconsolable husband and chopping ice to water the cows. She slipped, and her leg plum broke.
I heard Matt confirm each of these stories in the same breath that he denied them. After saying farewell to the poor fellow for the last time, just before Sundance and I headed East, I went to Fort Duchesne to ask the surgeon who took that leg. He said it was cancer. So, who knows what happened.[13] But the fact is, after the mess with the sawbones was done, my friend realized two things that frightened him to his core. For one, somehow, he’d come to really love his wife and was certain to be lost without her. And second, he needed more money to support them and the baby on the way then what honest work could pay. So the Devil’s eyes lit bright as fire when his ilk, E.B. Coleman, crossed the barroom floor with his wicked proposition.[14]
END
[1] Warner was elected Justice of the Peace in Carbon County, Utah in 1904 and later became deputy sheriff. On December 21, 1938, he died a respected lawman. He was seventy-two years old.
[2] Cassidy shot himself near San Vicente, Bolivia on November 7, 1908. His body was found with that of Henry Longabaugh, who was apparently shot by Cassidy through the left eye. Longabaugh, also known as the Sundance Kid, had been Cassidy’s principal partner in crime since Cassidy and Warner said their final goodbyes late in 1899.
[3] In 1888, Cassidy, having fled Utah as a wanted horse thief, worked the mines near Telluride, Colorado where he met Warner, a cattle rustler in unlawful possession of the area’s fastest horse. The two were fast friends. Soon, Warner introduced Cassidy to the notorious gang leader Tom McCarty and the outlaw life. Warner claimed to have “taught Butch Cassidy everything he knew about bank robbing.” The truth to that is debated, but Warner is credited with giving Cassidy his nickname after an incident involving Warner’s revolver, “Butch.”
[4] Dry Fork Canyon is located ten miles north of Vernal, Utah in the Uinta Mountains. In 1896, a rumor of a possible copper deposit in the canyon spurred two parties to investigate. E.B. Coleman of Salt Lake City set out, closely followed by the brothers Ike and Dick Staunton and David Milton of Vernal.
[5] The first son of his father’s fifth wife, Warner was born on April 12, 1864, and was baptized as Willard Christiansen. His father had moved to Vernal after converting to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1853. This is the genesis of Warner’s nickname, “Mormon Kid,” the name that Coleman knew him by when they met at the Vernal saloon on May 6,1896.
[6] Diamond Mountain Ranch is twenty miles north of Vernal and thirty-five miles east of Dry Fork Canyon as the crow flies. In 1879, Jim Warren employed Warner as a night guard. The would-be horse thief was Warner’s first kill, but he was far from the last. Seventeen years later, Warner agreed to Coleman’s offer of $500 to murder Coleman’s three competitors camping in Dry Fork.
[7] By summer of 1889, having robbed banks in Denver and Telluride, Warner accrued a fortune of $31,500, worth $1,044,666 in 2023.
[8] On September 7, 1893, the McCarty Gang attempted to rob the bank in Delta, Colorado. The ring of Tom’s revolver felling the teller drew the attention of local attorney Ray Simpson, who shot and killed Tom’s brothers Bill and Fred as the bandits tried to escape. McCarty disappeared soon thereafter. The riders of the Outlaw Trail were adrift, leaderless, for three chaotic years.
[9] Joyce Warner was the daughter of Matt and Rosa. “A consequence of that green gown,” Cassidy wrote. In 1938, before her father’s death, she edited and published his autobiography Last of the Bandit Riders… Revisited.
[10] “Take your medicine, you dirty sons of bitches!” Warner was reported to have said as the gun fight ensued on the morning of May 7, 1896. Ike killed Warner’s horse first, then Dave Milton was fatally shot in the spine by Warner while still sleeping in his tent. Dick was discovered quickly bleeding out from three wounds after the fighting stopped. Warner also shot Ike’s nose off.
[11] Warner was as infamous for his temper as for his inclination to revelry. When the shooting stopped that morning in Dry Fork, it was quickly discovered that Warner and his victims knew each other, having all grown up together in Vernal.
[12] Warner turned himself in for the killings in Dry Fork. On August 13, 1896, after Warner refused to be broken out, Cassidy robbed the bank in Montpelier of $7,165 to pay Warner’s bail. The robbery launched Cassidy’s career as an outlaw gang leader, but Warner turned down the offer.
[13] Rosa died of cancer shortly after the birth of a son in 1897. Warner was let out on supervised release to attend the funeral and spend the day with his child. He served three years of his five-year sentence. The boy didn’t live to see his father again.
[14] Cassidy wrote separately, “I read my bit about Matt to Sundance. His eyes found a great distance in the candle flame, then he started telling me about some book, Flatland by Edwin Abbott. It’s the story of a square meeting a sphere, like a ball. The square was two-dimensional, and so it had a one-dimensional perspective. This made the sphere look like a line that expanded and contracted as it crossed the square’s vision. Sundance paused. I think he thought I might ask him something, but I didn’t. He squinted and cocked his head. Humans, he went on, are four-dimensional creatures, living in time, and so we have a three-dimensional perspective. Don’t you wonder then if a five-dimensional being, a being outside of time, wouldn’t appear omnipresent? Someone’s coming.”
Andrew S. Fish is a hobby-writer from Ames, Iowa. He previously lived in Denver and traveled extensively in the American West. He taught History and Literature for the first half of his career. He prefers to write at the intersection of historical fiction and fantasy. He lives with bipolar disorder.