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271 Harry Longabaugh, alias Harry Alonzo, alias Frank Roberts, alias Frank Jones, with a future paved with fresh aliases a-plenty, but already nicknamed “the Sundance Kid,” had been a fugitive for ten years. His story, like that of most of his companions, could be told in three words: cowboy, pilferer, outlaw. He came West from Pennsylvania as a fifteen year old in 1882, and worked on various ranches, beginning with his uncle’s.1 In 1887 he pleaded guilty to horse theft and was sentenced to eighteen months at hard labor in the new Crook County Jail at Sundance, in the northeast corner of Wyoming.2 Early in the summer of 1892, he may have been one of a hard riding trio who plundered five stage coaches in the Mussel Shell country of central Montana within a period of fifteen days.3 On November 29 of that year he took part in the train robbery at Malta, Montana, on the recently constructed Great Northern line, acquiring little loot and only a splash of short-lived notoriety.4 After staying out of trouble for almost five years he was arrested with Harvey Logan and Walter Punteney for the robbery of the bank at Belle Fourche, South Dakota, on Monday, June 28, 1897. Longabaugh was caught in bad company, had a bad record, and was planning to help the other two rob a bank elsewhere when they were all pulled in; but he may well not have been among the six Belle Fourche robbers , though Logan and Punteney were. Longabaugh and Logan, whose pose as the Jones brothers had not yet been unmasked, did not wait to be tried; on October 31, they broke jail at Deadwood and were not recaptured.5 On the other hand, there is a high degree of probability that Longabaugh took part in the train robberies at Humboldt, Nevada, on July 14, 1898, and Wilcox, Wyoming, on June 2, 1899, and in a saloon robbery at Elko, Nevada, on April 3, 1899, though he was not publicly accused of any of the three.6 Up to December, 1894, Harvey Logan, alias Tom Jones, alias Dickinson, alias Roberts, but worst known as “Kid Curry,” gave no promise of the infamy that was to be his. But two days after Christmas that year he rounded off the celebrations in Landusky, Montana, by killing Powell“Pike”Landusky, founder of the town. For the next two years + 19 ∂ BUTCH CASSIDY, THE SUNDANCE KID . . . AND WILL CARVER 272 The Deadliest Outlaws he and his brother, Loney, made their living as rustlers and petty holdup men, under the guidance of “Flat nose” George Currie.7 He and Loney rode with Currie, Punteney, Harve Ray, and Tom O’Day at Belle Fourche. He and Currie were most likely alongside Longabaugh at Humboldt and Elko. These three, with Loney, the Logans’ cousin Bob Lee, alias “Bob Curry,” and Ben Kilpatrick, were the Wilcox robbers. Currie and the Logans were the three who killed Sheriff Hazen and afterwards outran the posses that trailed them almost to the Montana and Idaho boundary lines.8 In the latter part of the year, as we have seen, Longabaugh, Ben Kilpatrick, and Harvey Logan made their way to Alma, New Mexico. Longabaugh soon left for Brown’s Hole or Hole-in-the-Wall. Logan and Kilpatrick, along with Cassidy, Carver, Capehart, Hilliard, and Weaver, were following him north some weeks later when the arrest of Cassidy and Weaver, and the killing of Gibbons and LeSueur, compelled the diversion that led to their encounter with Scarborough and Birchfield. A month after the killing of Scarborough, Logan, Kilpatrick, and others again moved north through Arizona or New Mexico. Capehart, Hilliard, and George Kilpatrick may have been in the party, which probably divided en route, three going some hours ahead of the others. Since they reached the Robbers’ Roost area of Utah without causing any news, it is impossible to say exactly when they began their long ride or which route they took. Cassidy, having been detained in Socorro, probably started out later, accompanied by Will Carver. Whether they trailed the main group to begin with, or headed directly for Brown’s Hole, these two, and they alone, reached Powder Springs, in the extreme northwest of Colorado, sometime in June 1900.9 The party now led by Kid Curry may have intended to rendezvous with Cassidy and Carver, or they may have had plans of their own all along. If their program...

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