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Ivy was occupied, so I sat at one of the computer terminals, looking up names of the outlaws we’d encountered. I’d done this at home and at KWMT, too, but the library had different resources.
Not much at all on the Virtanens, as Ivy had said. I segued to Laura Bullion and Ben Kilpatrick, confirming much of what I’d already seen. Also confirming an impression.
“Are you waiting for me, Elizabeth?”
“Yes, and thank you.” I turned toward her as she sat in the empty spot beside me.
She smiled in protest. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Oh, yes, you did. You saved me from looking up Butch, Sundance, and Etta, again, and getting a headache.”
“A headache?”
“A thousand contradictory stories, often stated flatly as fact.”
She laughed, then covered her mouth in an instinctive reversion to the old Hush days of libraries. “I know. And they don’t cite their sources or specify dates, so it’s hard — impossible — to tell when they’re contradicting each other or what’s already been proven untrue.”
She shook her head in commiseration, which I appreciated.
I wondered if Keefe and Sam had felt the same frustration. Or if they, like some of the writers of the online articles, picked a particular version of the story and went with it, not acknowledging pesky contradictions.
“Ivy, I know the person who shared Keefe’s interests, especially in the Virtanens is Sam McCracken. Did they talk about going to Elk Rock Ranch?”
“Keefe mentioned Sam coming to his place a few times. In fact, he said Sam was coming—”
Her eyes widened.
On video I’d have made her say it herself. Now, I spared her. “Just before Keefe was killed.”
“Yes,” she said in a small voice. “But that doesn’t mean—”
“Did you observe them together? In conversation, sharing notes—”
“They did share notes,” she said eagerly, as if that proved murder was impossible between them. “And they’d sit together sometimes, so if I’d find something — anything — I’d bring it to both of them. That was a relief, because they often asked for the same material and it was awkward giving it to one first, though I always based it on who asked first and—”
Before she wound herself into an unbreakable knot, I jumped in with, “I wonder why they became so fascinated?” I already had a good idea for each, so I broadened it. “Why people are drawn to... well, thieves?”
I understood the allure of the Butch and Sundance characters from the movie. But that was a movie, not who the men had been in real life. After all they did steal things and I’ve never gotten the draw of thieves. Okay, Cary Grant in It Takes a Thief. But, c’mon, Cary Grant. Besides, he was reformed.
Even as a kid, I was not entranced with Robin Hood the way my brothers were. Stealing from the rich, giving to the poor was a stop-gap measure. You needed a more systemic solution. Granted, those take longer, and a free press is vital, which they didn’t have in the Middle Ages. But, still, not my favorite movies.
Ivy tipped her head, considering my question seriously.
“It’s seen as a period when the Wild in the Wild West was fading away and people — especially men — can get nostalgic about that. The idea that men were free to roam the west and not be connected to the markers of civilization, like churches and schools and such. In fact, they robbed two symbols of the taming of the west — banks and railroads.”
I suspected that had more to do with the fact that that’s where the money was, but I wouldn’t argue.
“In this area, the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century was viewed as a far more major shift than moving from the Twentieth to the twenty-first was for us. Those outlaws started operating a few years before and most of them were dead by the end of the first decade of the new century.
“So, yes, some nostalgia. Seeing it as a more romantic period. For example, did you know the Wanted poster on Butch Cassidy for one of his robberies referred to him as a Highwayman? So did Wanted posters for Oscar Virtanen.”
Okay, that was kind of cool.
“Highwaymen.” She rolled the word around on her tongue “So much more appealing than bank robbers. One certainly wouldn’t call the Al Capones and John Dillingers of the 1930s highwaymen. Far too dashing and romantic for them. Then, the emphasis was on how many people they’d killed — think of Bonnie and Clyde. But with Butch Cassidy’s gang it was—” She paused. “It was mostly the amount of money they stole, which was considerable.”
“You’re thinking of Kid Curry as the exception, because he did kill around a dozen people.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I was. If you’re interested, I can show you copies of those Wanted posters.”
