Lay
Still just a young pup, Lay and his family move from Ohio to the town of Wray in northeastern Colorado in the early 1870s, and purchase a farm there with all the varied hours and bad-breaking toils such an endeavor comes with. Not the life the youth was seeking, when Elzy is eighteen he concocts a plan to move about the West seeking adventure as a cowboy with his best friend of over a decade, William McGinnis. Soon homesick, McGinnis will find his way back to Wray (the lad will decide to return to his family and after attending school in Denver, will eventually become Colorado's State Treasurer and Auditor, with the pair never seeing each other again), leaving Lay with his pal's name as his favorite alias once his criminal career is under way. Still seeking his own path, Lay also makes his way to Denver, where for a time, he earns his food and rent by driving a horse-drawn streetcar over the streets of the Mile high City. Wanting thrills and adventure, they finally come Lay's way when on the job, he sees a man attempting to molest a woman passenger and takes immediate action by throwing the individual off the streetcar and on to the pavement, an action he believes has killed the man, an action which causes him to flee the city. Drifting west, in the wildest regions of Utah, Lay begins cowboying, meets one of the two women he will marry (the daughter of a rancher with a small spread near the town of Maeser, Maude Davis, who will bear him a daughter, Marvel Matilda, before divorcing the outlaw while he is in prison), a paramor with whom he will become involved with from time to time over the years, the wild daughter of a cattle rancher, Josie Bassett, a Utah rancher who isn't adverse to robbery when the bills get too big, Matt Warner, and while working for Warner, the Mormon gentleman that will become Lay's best friend, Robert LeRoy Parker, aka Butch Cassidy.
Maude
Josie (Next To Window And Kids)
Warner
Parker/Cassidy
Intrigued by the stories of easy money Warner and Cassidy tell of running a racehorse named Betty and being loose with rebranding rides and cattle, Lay begins his criminal career by agreeing to join Warner and Warner's nephew, Lew McCarty, in robbing a local shopkeeper of a considerable amount of cash ... enough for Lay to open up a very profitable gambling house and saloon in the town of Vernal, where Elzy enjoys entertaining many shady friends and customers (the business will eventually be closed by Uintah County Sheriff John T. Pope). Now in his twenties, Lay is tall and slender, makes friends easily with his very agreeable personality, is extremely intelligent (those in the know will later state that the early jobs of the Wild Bunch are planned by Lay as much as Cassidy), and can sit a horse and shoot as well as any man in the West. Looking for something to replace the income of the closed saloon, Lay joins a recently released from prison Cassidy (where he had been serving time for cattle rustling) at a cabin along the Green River, but any ranching plans the pair might have are dashed in 1896 when Matt Warner gets in a gunfight trying to intimidate two men off a mining claim that his employer, E. B. Coleman, a prospector and mining promoter, covets, kills the two prospectors on the property, and is arrested and placed on trial ... a trial that could result in his hanging if Warner can not procure a good lawyer. Asking his friends for help, Lay and Cassidy saddle up, and joined by a Brown's Park cowboy named Wilbur "Bub" Meeks, head for the mountains of southwestern Idaho and the town of Montpelier to gain the funds they will need to hire lawyer Douglas Arnold Preston (the future head of the Democratic Party in Wyoming, where he will also become a state senator and state attorney general) to defend Warner (defended by Preston, Warner will not be hung, but he will be sentenced to five years of prison hard labor for involuntary manslaughter). A smooth operation only marred by Lay having to take a pistol to the head of a recalcitrant teller, the bandits arrive at the bank just before closing time on Thursday, August 13, 1896 and go into action. Pistols drawn, Meeks watches the trio's horses, Cassidy covers outside and inside from the door of the bank (it is the first such institution to be chartered in the state of Idaho), and Lay gathers up the money. Bank robbed with no shots fired, the trio saunter out of town, and using relays of escape horses, beat a posse into Wyoming, fifteen miles away, in possession of between $6,000 and $16,500.
Preston
Meeks
The Montpelier Bank
Robbery successful and Warner saved from the noose, Cassidy and Lay headquarter themselves in another cabin north of Vernal with their women, Cassidy with Jossie Bassett's wild younger sister, Ann, and the now married Elzy with Maude (who later admits to falling in love at first sight with the young outlaw), but soon transplant to Brown's Park when they find out they are suspects in the Montpelier robbery. At Brown's Park, the men are able to assume somewhat normal lives, become popular in the local community, often visit the nearby family and ranch of Bassett, and in formal dark suits with white starched collars and black bow ties, serve as waiters at an elaborate Thanksgiving party for over thirty regional celebrants. Law remorseless though, shortly after the celebration the foursome are forced once more to find safer shelter, this time in a desolate portion of northern Wayne County, Utah's Robber's Roost, near a place called Horseshoe Canyon. There, the pair plans the next robbery of the Wild Bunch, a heist of the payroll of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company of Castle Gate, Utah.
Ann Bassett
Winter snow melting, in April of 1897, Cassidy and Lay ride into Castle Gate on horses that have been trained not to startle at train whistles. One of the largest mining operations in Utah, with payroll times changed at randown to defeat outlaws, the men make themselves as inconspicuous as possible as they wait for a week for the train bringing the payroll into town. Lingering over, at noon on Wednesday, April 21, 1897, passenger train No. 2 of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad arrives from Salt Lake City with the coal company's payroll, which paymaster E. L. Carpenter and clerk T. W. Lewis carry seventy-five yards from the train depot to the foot of the outside stairway leading up to the offices of Pleasant Valley Coal ... payroll in the form of a cloth sack containing $1,000 in silver, another cloth sack with $860 in silver and $1,000 in cash, and a leather satchel with $7,000 in gold inside, a handsome total of $9,860 in coal company assets. At the foot of the stairway, Butch Cassidy is waiting, while across the street at the horse rail of a saloon, Lay sits astride his ride with Butch's horse at the ready. Revolver pulled and shoved into the paymaster's face, Cassidy grabs what he can take of the payroll (the frightened assistant has run into the nearby Wasatch Company store with the sack containing $1,000 in silver), makes his way across the street, and tosses the plunder to Lay ... who in grabbing the loot out of the air, loses control of Butch's horse. Forced to keep irate miners at bay with his pistol while Lay regains the escaped mount, in a matter of moments the pair are on their way out of town with $7,000 (to lighten the load on their horses, the outlaws discard the sack containing currency and silver) ... this time escaping posse retribution again by using relays of horses to flee into the wilderness, and a new trick, cutting the town's telegraph wires before the robbery so word can not get out to nearby towns (compliments of Wild Bunch rider, Joe Walker)
Company Headquarters - Note The Stairs
In 1897, Lay also becomes a father as Maude gives birth to a little baby girl the couple will name Matilda Maud. But instead of being a joy to the couple, the new member of the family becomes the source of the breakup of the relationship when Maude insists Elzy give up his criminal adventures. When Lay refuses, Maude and daughter leave and move in with her parents. Bachelor again, moving to new digs, Lay rides to New Mexico with Cassidy, where the pair find work as cowboys on the WS Ranch (just across the border from Arizona, near the town of Alma, in a valley along the San Francisco River) run by its part owner, a former professional soldier in England (though the man is Irish) named William French. Only concerned with the work of the ranch getting done, no questions are asked when the pair prove to be excellent workers, as do the motley group of men Cassidy brings out to New Mexico to work for French too (Cassidy becomes foreman of the ranch under the alias of Jim Lowe) ... even when the men often leave for days without saying where they are going, like when Elzy and Butch show up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in 1898 to discuss with Harvey and Lonie Logan, the Sundance Kid (Harry Longabaugh), Ben Kilpatrick (the Tall Texan) and other desperadoes, whether they should become Army Rough Riders and for paroles, go off to fight the Spanish in Cuba (the Army is not interested when the subject is broached). Butch and Elzy are also missing from the ranch on a rainy night in early June of 1899, when members of the Wild Bunch hit the westbound Union Pacific No. 1 Overland Flyer Limited just outside Wilcox, Wyoming (Cassidy does not participate in the robbery but does help with the planning and escape). One of the group's most famous capers (six members participate, but the mix of outlaws is never totally resolved), the robbery features a clerk named Woodcock who refuses to open the door to the express car, Wild Bunch dynamite that blows the car apart and covers much of the loot (somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000) in a raspberry paste (the fruit being a casualty of the gang's excessiveness with explosives), and an escape into the Hole-in-the-Wall country of Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains during which Harvey Logan kills Converse County Sheriff Josiah Hazen (leading a fourteen man posse that gives up the chase after Hazen's death).
Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan
Wilcox - True West Magazine
Too Much Blow
Returning to New Mexico and ranch life, Lay is interested in experiencing more outlaw adrenaline as quickly as possible, rather than the chores he is assigned and soon offers his services to a group of outlaws that ride with the Ketchum Brothers of Texas ... Sam and Tom (who becomes known as Black Jack). Causing a rift among the friends because Cassidy does not trust Black Jack's leadership (correctly so as the Ketchums and their associates will hit the Colorado & Southern Railroad at the same location three times, the first in 1897 ... with deadly consequences), Lay leaves his wrangler duties and later in July of 1899, is a member of a foursome (no Black Jack after he is kicked out of his own gang by his brother for being drunk and crazy too often) consisting of Sam Ketchum, Will "News" Carver, and Kid Curry (Harvey Logan) that hits a Colorado & Southern train at a spot between the towns of Folsom and Des Moines called Twin Mountain, where the tracks of the railroad cross an old wagon trail. A successful robbery that features Wild Bunch traits of separating the express car from the rest of the train, a blown safe, $30,000 in booty, and an escape off into the nearby wilderness. The gang however is not prepared for how quickly a posse locates its hiding place (an informer has been involved and some of the men have responded previously to a train being robbed at Twin Mountain). Five days after the robbery, in the early morning, at remote location in the mountains of New Mexico called Turkey Creek Canyon, a half-dressed Elzy is about to fill his canteen from a pool of water when he discovers lawmen have arrived at the bandit's camp (a posse of seven out of the town of Cimarron led by Huerfano County Sheriff Ed Farr ... three lawmen have taken up positions on a ridge left of the camp and the other four deploy to the north side of where Lay has gone to get water). No shouts to identify himself or surrender, Lay is shot in the shoulder and back and drops unconscious to the ground. Waking a short time later he crawls back to the camp (each time he tries to stand he falls), grabs a rifle and makes his way to a place fifty yards below where an outlaw (the man will be described as either being Harvey Logan or Will Carver) fires on the posse with deadly accuracy using smokeless powder. In the all-day exchange of lead between the lawmen and the outlaws that follows, from 200 yards away, Deputy Frank Smith is struck in the calf of his left leg, Ketchum is hit by a bullet that breaks his left arm just below the shoulder, Sheriff Farr is crazed near his right wrist, then is struck by a round that goes through the tree he is hiding behind and hits him in the chest (a mortal wound that causes him to collapse on the wounded Smith), and Deputy Henry M. Love is wounded in the leg (a wound that will prove fatal, the outlaw bullet that hits Love strikes the knife he is wearing and drives its blade into his leg, a blade he has recently used to skin a diseased cow with that causes blood poisoning to set in). When darkness finally arrives, the bandits put Lay and Ketchum on their horses and then flee the area in the heavy rain that begins to fall (Ketchum will not be unable to stay in the saddle and is left at a ranch house near Ute Creek where he is arrested before being transported to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he dies of blood poisoning on July 24 ... a death which his brother Tom will seek to avenge by robbing the Twin Mountain train a third time by himself ... a bungled job that will get Black Jack shot in the arm and arrested, with the arm having to be amputated and Ketchum found guilty, being hung ... with the botched execution taking off the outlaw's head). Bandits for sure, the next day a relief posse searches the camp and finds bedding rolled up in tarps, a slicker, a bloody hat, provisions, frying pans, a large coffeepot, numerous empty .30-.40 cartridge cases, a dead horse with its saddle still on, a wounded horse that will have to be shot, an empty valise, and a box containing close to forty pounds of dynamite.
Ambush At Turkey Creek Canyon - True West Magazine
Elzy Gets Hit - True West Magazine
Fighting Off The Posse - True West Magazine
Sam Ketchum
Still recuperating from his wounds, while Carver watches through binoculars and Logan is in Carlsbad gathering supplies for the trio, on August 14, 1899, Lay rides into the Chimney Wells cow camp of rancher Virgil Lusk, where he has been invited to have breakfast the day before, unaware that a posse is waiting for him. Eating his breakfast in the cook tent, Lay hears footsteps running in his direction and guesses the authorities are on hand. "Did you do this, you old son-of-a-bitch?" he screams at Lusk as he pulls his pistol and fires at Lusk, hitting the rancher in the wrist. Running out of the tent, he fires on his attackers and hits Deputy Rufe Thomas in the left arm Then Lay is dropped by a shot from the gun of Eddy County Sheriff Cicero Stewart that comes so close to the outlaw's head that he is stunned and drops to the ground (the first two times the sheriff shoots at Lay his gun misfires). Rushing forward, Stewart disarms Lay, but has to bust the outlaw over the head when the bandit try to grab the lawman's pistol out of his holster. Arrested, Lay (who for days will claim he is not the notorious outlaw, but actually a cowboy named William McGuinnis) will be put on trial and found guilty of the murder of Sheriff Farr (even though he might have been unconscious at the time when either Logan or Carver did the actual firing), receiving a life sentence for the crime.
Will Carver
Lay Rides In For Breakfast - True West Magazine
Arrested
Behind bars at the New Mexico State Penitentiary in Santa Fe, Lay becomes the last member of the Wild Bunch to not die with his boots on ... Lonie Logan is shot to death while visiting his aunt in Missouri in 1900, Flat Nose Curry is killed rustling horses and turned into skin souvenirs by the posse that brings him down in 1900, Will Carver loses a 1901 gunfight with Sheriff E. S. Briant in Sonora, Texas, Harvey Logan commits suicide outside of Parachute, Colorado after a failed train robbery and wounding in 1904, Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are said to be gunned down San Vincente, Bolivia by soldiers of the Bolivian Army in 1908, and Ben Kilpatrick has his head bashed in by an express clerk during a failed train robbery in 1912. Story seemingly over with Lay serving a life sentence, Elzy manages to get out after spending only seven years behind bars ... not causing trouble, he is made a prison trustee to the warden, driving the man into Santa Fe on occasion, and taking care of his horses. Returning to the prison on one such day, the men discover the convicts have rioted and taken the warden's wife and daughter hostage, a life threatening situation in which Elzy is able to talk the rioters down and gain the release of their captives, for which he is granted a pardon in June of 1906 from New Mexico Governor Miguel Antonio Otero (there are also rumors that his release might lead authorities to hidden outlaw plunder). No more law breaking, out, Lay spends several months in the town of Alma, then rides north to Baggs, Wyoming (a small ranching community just north of the state's border with Colorado) where he runs a saloon, marries for a second time (to Mary the couple will have two children, James Walker, born in 1910, and Mary Lucille, born in 1912), and searches the region for oil deposits. It is also said that he digs up over $58,000 in hidden bandit loot, often takes rides into the mountains with Matt Warner (the pair actually raise funds to send a friend to Bolivia to find out if Butch and Sundance are really dead), and is said to reunite one more time with his friend, Butch Cassidy, in 1928. Using his education and intellect, Lay transforms himself into a mining and oil geologist that supervises the building of the Colorado River Aqueduct system through the Riverside and Imperial Valleys. Moving his family to Los Angeles after he retires from working for the All-American Canal Company, Elzy suffers a heart attack and dies on November 10, 1934, at the age of 65 (his wife will outlive her husband by thirty years). The former outlaw is buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California under a tombstone bearing his real name ... Elzy Lay.
Prison
Prisoner
The Adventure Seeker - Young Lay
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