Butch Cassidy Narrative
In my English Language course we were asked to compose a narrative based on a anecdote told to us by someone from our past. Therefore I created my narrative on my own interpretation and adaptation of the legend of Butch Cassidy. It is not complete as my narrative had a word limit, hence its abrupt end, however nonetheless I hope you still enjoy it.
As I lay here, on the dusty and filth riddled floor of the bar with my partner laying beside me punctured with small holes containing the hot burning metal of a bullet, I cannot help but be curious as to what our lives would have been if we were not the famous ‘Yankee Banditos’, I can safely assure you my tale would have been mighty dull and the legends of myself and my partner the ‘Sundance Kid’ would have been compromised and we would surely be decent folk with a decent name to pass through the generations.
“Ah Sundance, if only you had been the brains,” I exclaimed. “Maybe then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Oh high and mighty of yourself butch”, retorted Sundance. “Ain’t no bother tryin’ to create sympathy for yourself now, ‘specially as you have gotten us into this fine mess.”
Wow, after twenty five years of our, so called, partnership, facing down a force that not even Sundance could face, had reduced us to lowly bickering commoners who reside in the town requesting ‘pasos’.
I laughed to myself, “Your sarcasm always seizes to amaze me you know that? But it has been far too many scraps, eh Sundance?”
Sundance looked at me with that face. The face reserved for those who annoy and will inevitably die by him. And as every old wives tell, the moment you die your whole life will flash before your eyes.
Recollection and recognition, possibly the most over claimed words applied to man, but as myself and Sundance lay here with blood pouring, like sparkling red wine out of a bottle similar to that of indelible red ink, upon the dusty floor those two moods, emotions, thoughts, wonderings, ponders, whatever you wish to name them, were being expressed on our faces, as we see our poor, ungrateful and insignificant lives flashing before our eyes.
Even though I had been born eighteen winters prior to that day, and I can assure you it was the same as Sundance, my life really began when I joined the infamous train robbers: The Bollard Gang, led by the notorious John Bollard. I joined my eighteenth winter after just having watched the town-folk and sheriff mistakenly lynch my folks over the matter of sheep and other agricultural stock, regardless of their innocence.
The Bollard gang was just like any other gang, full of violence and hatred, I secretly despised both, however once initiated you, you were judged on those qualities deemed unnecessary by some, intelligence and strategy, rather than how fast you can draw, differing every other gang. Although in the events of meeting the soon to be “Sundance”, it was clear that those skills where indeed necessary, I sustained a devastating injury to my leg due to a rival gang’s jealousy. In the confusion of being shot, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, Sundance, came to my aid and with his unmatched performance, which has then since been unbeaten at least in my opinion, he was able to subdue our attackers with as little casualties. From that day on me and Sundance were inseparable, and with our many robberies we soon became the biggest gang in the United States of America.
Unfortunately with power come great change and it first started to show on one night when Bollard himself invited me to his tent for a favour
“Can I ask you something? It’s quite a bother and I ain’t sure you are gonna’ like it”, Bollard looked at me with his assessing eyes, which with the wrinkles on his brow and grey of his beard both showed, his many years watching people.
“Yeah sure John. What is it?” ,I queried, my curiosity sounding more like uncertainty as he was a quiet man who usually kept things to himself, played his cards close to his chest we used to say.
“I’m getting old”. I knew something was wrong he always claimed he “is as fit as a horse”, however I chose not to interrupt him as he seemed serious and his face expressed a sense of fear he carried a grave air of importance. “I know this more that ever however it may be due to said elderliness”, he stressed on elderliness in a sense of disgust. “Making me feel this way then again I do not know why, but I feel as though there are those who wish to lead our posse and want me dead. I request you look into it for me.”
The illness crept through his system, people called it appropriate, I always claimed it was paranoia of corruption, however it was not without good cause. Two nights prior Wayne, Bollards right-hand man, a shady man with a rat like face mirroring his deceitful eyes and scarred complexion, he portrayed his distaste for Bollard this ended in a series of hot-blooded debates which he in aggravation stormed off to his tent.
It was only four weeks after mine and Bollard’s discussion that something terrible indeed happened. Bollard took us, as a celebration, to the brothel in town where we could drink our abysmal lives away and lay the numbers of cheap whores who resided there, available for our entertainment. After us drinking our fill and gambling all our money and lives away in the game of liquor and provocateur’s, Bollard had come to the conclusion of taking his girl to one of the rooms above, and it was only after a matter of minutes before we heard a high pitched scream resonating around the robust brothel. This scream was not one of pleasure one expects to resonate from there, no it was a scream of fear and horror with a touch of pain. With a fleeting look at Sundance, me and the rest of the gang, save for Wayne who fell off the stairs and waddled away due to his session of vomiting, clambered up the flight of rickety stairs into the room to discover the source of the scream. The scream originated from the girl, who happened to be bare as the day she was born, enticing majority of the men displaying their allegiance, save few which included myself and Sundance. However the thing that drew me was the corpse of a man on the bed with blood surrounding his punctured abdomen, blood leaking from the crude torn flesh, along with a knife unlike any other, a distinct razor with C.W carved, with delicate expertise, upon the handle.
Yes, Wayne had murdered John Bollard that night, casting the Bollard Gang into chaos. It was that same night I left the Bollard Gang with Sundance. I saw what corruption and power had done to those men causing the pathetic gang to strike a mutiny upon its leader. I regretted not leaving sooner, then perhaps I would not of been in this predicament. I joined the Bollard Gang as Robert Leroy Parker, a naive child selfishly considered no one save himself and left as Butch Cassidy to start a new gang unknowingly that I would become legendary in the upcoming years. I joined as a Child who thought himself invincible and left as a adult still as vulnerable as a new born pup to the harsh, cold winter nights which were soon to come.
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