NARRATIVE: On the morning of March 30, 1889, Bob Parker, also known as Butch Cassidy, along with Tom McCarty, Matt Warner and a fourth man recruited to hold their horses, planned the Telluride Bank Robbery while working on local ranches. One ranch owner they worked for was Harry Adsit. When the gang was ready to rob the bank, they told Adsit that Bob needed to go back to Utah to help his family. Adsit liked Bob and didn't want him to leave, so he gave him a parting gift of any horse on the ranch in hopes he would come back and work for him. Bob chose a dapple-brown thoroughbred gelding, the horse he used in the robbery.
They dressed as if going to a dance, not a bank robbery, wearing fancy shirts, ten-gallon hats, high-heeled boots, red bandanas, chaps, and decked out their horses with silver-studded saddles and bridles. One curious thing Bob insisted on doing after robbing the bank was to leap onto his horse from the back, a real circus act. He did this successfully but lost his hat in the process.
After the robbery, the bank teller was told to stay in the bank, but didn't. Matt Warner fired at his feet to scare him back into the bank. This spooked the fourth man's horse and he was almost bucked off. They rode off firing their guns in the air to terrorize the local citizens. “This city crowd is just like a bunch of babies,” said McCarty.
They got out of town clean but ran smack dab into their former boss, Adsit, who was surprised and shouted out, "Hello cowboys, what's the big hurry?" They just rode past.
Jim Clark, the sheriff, was conveniently out of town the day of the robbery. They left his cut from the robbery in a hollow log outside of town. A little later, the acting sheriff, James A. Beattie, who had been sworn in a day or two before, came in pursuit and asked Adsit if four riders had been by. Adsit said they had but didn't tell him that he knew who they were. The temporary sheriff didn't feel up to the chase so he deputized Adsit and charged him with the task of tracking down the gang. Mr. Adsit was not interested in catching his friends and he really didn't have much of a chance since they had fresh horses waiting at several points along the escape route. The gang got away with $22,350, but they were now known as outlaws with bounties on their heads, dead or alive, hunted for the rest of their lives.
This was the beginning of when a good-natured, charismatic and generous Butch Cassidy emerged as an American folk hero and one hell of a bank robber. (Source: Leerhsen, Charles, “Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw,” Simon & Schuster, 2020)
