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Clara didn’t look impressed, however, as she pointed to the next boxes to go. “You’re not the only one thinking that. There’s a theory that a rancher in Utah was really the Sundance Kid. But, again, DNA said no. Only the proponents of that theory are saying maybe someone else’s DNA got mixed up with the rancher’s because the cemetery flooded. Or maybe Sundance was adopted by the Longabaughs and that’s why a distant relative’s DNA didn’t match. Yeah,” she said in response to my raised eyebrows, “they’re grasping at DNA straws.”
Couldn’t argue with her there. “Let’s go back to you saying Cassidy was never imprisoned.”
“I didn’t say that. I said he was never imprisoned for robbing a bank or a train. He was, in fact, in the Wyoming prison in Laramie after being found guilty of larceny of a horse, which he claimed he bought. Some historians say he might have bought the horse, but from a rustler friend. And some say he might have been an equal partner in the rustling. He was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison. That’s when it got really interesting.”
“That’s when it got interesting?”
“Uh-huh. He hadn’t done a whole lot at that point. Oh, yeah, the judge who sentenced him said he also thought Butch had been guilty on a charge of rustling he’d been acquitted of the year before, but nothing like what he did later. And apparently he impressed a lot of people. The judge who sentenced him wrote to the governor asking that his sentence be commuted, saying he thought Butch could become a leader of men—”
I huh’d.
“For good,” she clarified. “And the governor did it. Butch got out after eighteen months. There was a legend Butch told the governor he’d leave Wyoming alone. A promise he didn’t keep.
“He organized robberies in Idaho and Utah, then, three and a half years after the pardon, came the job on the Union Pacific in Wilcox, Wyoming. The next month, Butch’s best friend, Elzy Lay was arrested. That could be seen as the start of the disintegration of the gang, especially with several dying in shootouts with lawmen. Butch might have seen what was ahead, because Butch tried to reach out for amnesty. Accounts differ of whether the authorities ever seriously considered it.”
Somehow she had to be picking lighter boxes than I had.
She had plenty of breath to say, “Probably also didn’t help that some of his known associates pulled off other robberies and Kid Curry killed a number of lawmen around the same time. Maybe Butch saw it wasn’t going to happen. He and Sundance and others robbed a Union Pacific train near Tipton, Wyoming, in August 1900 and amnesty was off the table.
“In December 1900 came the other photograph you’ve probably seen — him with Sundance and others in the ‘Fort Worth Five’ the Pinkertons got ahold of and used for wanted photos. By February the next year, he and Sundance and Etta Place left for South America. And you know what happened — or didn’t happen — there.
“A couple sidenotes. The governor who pardoned Cassidy in 1896, was not reelected in 1898. In fact, he wasn’t even nominated by his party to run again.”
“Because he pardoned Butch Cassidy?”
She rolled a shoulder. “Probably didn’t help, but with him not winning his party’s nomination, you’ve got to suspect more general politics at play. The other sidenote has to do with Elzy Lay.”
“Butch’s friend, sentenced to life for murder,” I remembered.
“Right. In New Mexico. He became a trustee, even accompanying the warden on a trip. While they were gone, inmates took the warden’s wife and daughter hostage. Lay was credited with persuading the inmates to let them go and was pardoned in 1906. As far as anyone can tell, he never committed another crime. Had a family. Lived in Wyoming, then moved to California, where he died in 1934.”
“Is any of that history in these boxes?”
“Heaven only knows. Teague — blast his disorderly hide — sure didn’t know. Or care.”
“What about history closer to home, like Oscar and Pearl Virtanen?”
“Ah-hah. That’s what you’re after. To find out what — if anything — about them Keefe found in the boxes he looked in. Yes, Mrs. Parens told me about that. Of course she did — and that was before he was murdered.” Her head jerked up as she deposited her boxes in the storeroom. “You don’t think he was killed over something in the boxes—?”
“Can’t know until we know what — if anything — he found. That’s why I want to look through—”
“No.”
“—or have you look through them immediately.”
“No. There is a method to this and I will not jeopardize the work for the museum on a longshot.” She hefted two more boxes and walked out.
I had to scurry to get my two and catch up with her at the outside door. “Murder. Justice,” I huffed. “You couldn’t move them up in the rotation?”
“No. But I’ll tell you what,” she said as we reached the van still holding a dozen boxes to move inside, with an equal number to come out. “You help me to the end and I’ll let you know when I do get to those boxes.”
“Deal.”
I’d keep working on her to get to them sooner.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I brushed myself off as I got out of the SUV, but I still looked like I’d been doing hard labor in a dusty attic.
