THE WILD WEST, AS WE NOW PERCEIVE it, lasted only about twenty years, from 1880 to 1900. This was the era of the true cowboy, and if one were unfortunate enough to have been born after the turn of the century, it was too late. I was born too late to have experienced the era, but I was fortunate enough to have lived it vicariously through others who did. The best of these-and just about the last of his breed-was my old friend Milt Hinkle.

It was as unlikely a friendship as I could have imagined. In 1960 1 had gone to Hollywood to "be an* actor." I had stars in my eyes,.as many nineteen-year-olds do, and for a couple of years I studied acting at Desilu and Paramount studios, and became acquainted with John Wayne, Lucille Ball, Natalie Wood, Annette Funicello, and some others. Perhaps I could have succeeded in the business except that I discovered I didn't have the ego to be an actor. It was John Wayne who convinced me that my talents lay more in the creative writing end of. the business, so I returned home to Utah and began Writing articles for national magazines.

In about 1963 1 wrote an article for one of the western magazines regarding Butch Cassidy, stating emphatically that he had not died in Bolivia in 1908-09 as many believed. Not long after the article appeared, I received a scribbled note postmarked "Kissimmee, Florida." It was my first contact with the man who was to become my good friend for the next decade.

Milt's letter was intriguing, to say the least. He complimented my article and said that he could confirm the fact that Butch

Cassidy had not been killed in South America. How? Well, that was easy, he said, because Butch had been his friend! He continued by saying that he had promised Cassidy never to reveal his secret while he was alive, and Milt had kept that promise. But he knew that Butch was dead now, and he was thinking of writing a story about his friendship with the congenial outlaw. Milt himself was a prolific writer, publishing dozens of his life-stories in western magazines over the years.

At first I didn't take Milt too seriously. He made some incredible claims which I found hard to believe. He said he had bulldogged a steer by biting its upper lip! He said he had bulldogged a steer by leaping on it from an airplane? He said he had once leaped his horse over three automobiles! Even more incredible was Milt's list of supposed acquaintances. These are just a few of the people he claimed to know: Butch Cassidy, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Teddy Roosevelt, Tom Mix, Buffalo Bill Cody, Sitting Bull, Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, Art Acord, John Wayne, Pancho Villa, and Will Rogers.

I couldn't take Milt's claims about Butch Cassidy seriously if he made similar claims about other well-known characters that, at least in my mind, he simply could not have known. I checked him out. I had another old rodeo-cowboy friend, Johnnie Mullens, who lived in Nevada. I dropped him a line and asked him about Milt Hinkle. "Hell yes, I know Milt," came back his reply. "Believe every damned word he says. He knew 'em all!" A similar note from John Wayne confirmed that he, too, knew Milt Hinkle! " "Hell," wrote the Duke, "I thought

everybody knew Milt Hinkle! " Suffice it to say that over a period of time, I discovered every one of Milt's claims to be absolutely true! If anything, he had been very modest.

Milt was born October 15, 188 1, when Bat Masterson was sheriff of Dodge City and Ford County, Kansas. Two years later, in 1883, Milt's father, George Hinkle, beat out Masterson in the local election and became sheriff in his stead. At the time, Dodge City was considered to be "the toughest cow-town in the West." Shootings were daily occurrences and killings frequent. George Hinkle, though his reputation would never rival that of Bat Masterson, was probably a better lawman, much more respected by the citizens of Ford County.

Milt Hinkle was a natural cowboy, a product of his environment, with just enough wildness in his soul to inspire adventure-and his life was one long adventure-and enough curiosity to occasionally get him into trouble.

The following account of Milt's life and times are, for the most part, in his own words, for they could never be better told otherwise.

"As a youngster growing up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where my dad settled Mother and me after finishing a fencing job for the XIT Ranch in Texas, I was the target for a lot of tongue-clucking and scandalized comment from the real proper folks in that town. 'That Hinkle boy' was branded a wild one, and a lot of rash predictions were made about my future as an adult (which some people figured would be pretty brief). This worried my poor mother, who was doing her best to make me a good boy.

Though I was a wild enough kid, I never got into any serious trouble-looking back, I wonder why! I was into plenty of mischief, however, including continual fist fights that kept me cut up and bloodied."

Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the early 1890s was not the best environment for a growing boy. Situated just across the river from Indian territory, the town was a place for outlaws to raise a little hell. This was Dalton gang territory. The town was filled with gambling houses, saloons, and a red light district, none of which ever closed.

"Like any small-town boy," Milt wrote, "I was hungry for excitement. I found entertainment in attending the public hangings that took place down by the old jail on the bank of the Arkansas River. At this time Isaac C. Parker was the United States District Judge in Fort Smith. He was known as 'The Hanging Judge' and with good reason, for by his orders eighty-eight men died on the gallows.... I remember him-he was white-haired and white bearded, with a stem set face that made him look seventy-five (He was only in his fifties at the time.).

Milt enjoyed the carnival atmosphere that attended the hangings, but his poor mother was upset about his attendance and tried to dissuade him without much success.

"One day a group of friends and I decided to play a 'hanging game.' We borrowed a halter rope from the livery stable and tossed one end of the rope up over an iron hook mounted on the wall. A boy named Banjo Fry elected himself 'Judge Parker.' I took what show folks call the second lead and was the 'hangee.' I climbed up on a rickety crate and the 'hangman' put the noose around my neck, tying the other end of the rope to the hasp of a door at the rear of the stable.

"'Have you got any last words? asked Judge Parker sternly.

"Before I could answer, the crate under my feet collapsed and I was walking on air. Seeing me hanging there and starting to turn purple, the other kids panicked, scattered, and left me to shift for myself I couldn't make a sound but my heels were beating a tattoo on the stable wall, and the noise aroused old Mooney Gavin, who was sleeping off a skinful just inside the stable. He cut me down just in the nick of time." Having lost interest in hangings, Milt took up a new pursuit-hunting. With his dog Lightning and his long, single-barrel, muzzle-loading shotgun, he brought back meat and hides to supplement the family income.

"I took a good beating from that gun. I named it'Old Betty,' after Dan'l Boone's, and she kicked me until I was black and blue before I learned the art of loading just so much powder and just so much shot, but learn I did ......

But Milt was still restless, and his mother thought he needed a man's firm hand so she sent him to live with his father, who had remarried and was living in Garden City, Kansas. The change only worsened his behavior. He missed his mother, hated his step-mother, and his father was too busy to notice him. After a series of fights with local boys, Milt returned to his mother at Fort Smith.

Then one day Milt got a break which changed his life. Dan Bull, a rancher from Abilene, Texas, brought a carload of horses to Fort Smith to sell, and when he saw young Milt hanging around the corrals, he offered him a job on his Texas ranch. "Uncle Dan" also saw to his schooling, giving him three horses with which to ride the twenty miles to the school. Milt rotated the horses so as to always have a fresh mount.

"Looking back, I know that Uncle Dan gave me a lot more than companionship and the kind of tough, challenging tasks that a kid of my restless, energetic nature needed.... Until I'd listened to Dan Bull, I'd never thought of human life as an endless pattern, one design being finished only to be followed by another, and another, under the patient fingers of the Weaver. It was a kind of solemn thing to think about." After working in Texas about a year-at fifteen dollars a month-Milt longed to see his mother again. He shook hands with Uncle Dan and took a train. His mother now operated a boarding house at 417 Aldine Courts in Kansas City. She saw to it that he got another term of schooling. "I was only twelve years old but could pass for sixteen because I was so big and husky."

But the city was too confining for Milt. "Not until the weight of years and hideful of busted-up bones finally dragged me from my saddle would I trade it for a rocking chair."

Milt headed for Bovina, Texas, and the XIT Ranch where he landed a job as a horse wrangler. He followed the chuck wagon and slept out under the stars for the next two years. His job, too, was to rustle twenty to thirty sacks of cow chips each day for the cooking fire, and wash the plates. He found a wolf cub in a den and domesticated it, and raised a baby antelope on grass roots boiled in thick, canned milk.

"In those days a six-gun and a rifle were as much a part of a cowboy's rig as his boots and saddle. And since I was doing a man's work, and nobody knew my real age (I never made a point of announcing it). I had a Colt.45 and a. 44-40 saddle rifle, for which I was regularly issued my share of ammunition....

"My 'artillery' teacher was a real old-time cowboy and ex-Ranger named Clark Cane. He taught me how to sight in fast on an object and squeeze the trigger and how to lead a moving target. It was a proud day for me when I got to take my. 44-40 saddle rifle and hunt mustangs. The trick was not to kill but to crease the neck just deep enough for the bullet to touch the spinal column, thus stunning the critter. Before he came to, there'd be ropes on him to hold him. Once in a while the crease would be too deep and the bullet would break the mustang's neck.

"I guess this sounds pretty brutal. But there's no getting around it. The early West was only a partly-civilized place. Most of us said things and did things that shock people today.... Some of the fashions they've got in behavior these days shock me.,,

Milt then drifted to Portales, New Mexico with his friend George West, where they went to work for the DX Ranch. "While working with the DZ, I joined 250 cowboys from ten cow outfits in the world's largest roundup. We handled more than 100,000 head of cattle, all thrown together in the four lake country near Roswell." During the confusion of the roundup, Milt was separated from his friend George West and never saw him again. "I was sorry about it for a while, but in those days friendships sat about as light on me as responsibility."

Hooking up with a new acquaintance named George Chamblis, Milt decided to visit El Paso. "But before we did we thought we would drop south and go by and see Judge Roy Bean, who was the 'Law West of the Pecos.' We made the trip to Langtry, as the judge called his little whistlestop, and the old man sure treated us nice.... It was the year 1865. The judge was then in his seventies, ahard-drinking whiskery, potbellied old Kentuckian who held court with a six-shooter on the table beside him....

The following year, at the tender age of fifteen, Milt found an a vocation that would occupy him for the rest of his life.

"The first wild west show I was ever on as a bronc buster was Buffalo Bill's Wild West (Show) from 1896 to late October 1901. A young boy like I was sure to fall for big hats, the bigger the better; chaps; big roweled spurs; large red or blue bandannas; beaded vest; leather cuffs; ladies' garters as arm bands; a forty-foot lariat; Fish brand slicker; a bedroll consisting of two good wool Navajo blankets and three good heavy quilts; heavy leatherseated double-rigged saddle; Navajo saddle blanket; a good pocket knife; and last but not least a Colt pistol....

"I figured that I could ride anything that walked, crept or crawled, and I proved it by riding all the show's bad, hard-to-ride bucking horses. I got a big kick and thrill by doing so. This also helped me a lot with the girls, which I liked very much.

"I enjoyed traveling the U.S.A., Canada, and part of Europe. And on the Buffalo Bill Wild West (Show), I had the pleasure of working with the great Annie Oakley, Frank Butler, Buck Taylor, Chief Sitting Bull, and many other greats. But seven years of hustling from railroad to steamships made me crave the wide open spaces, the mountains, the cattle, the cry of the coyote. The lonesome howl of the lobo wolf. The strike of lighting. The loud clap of thunder. The roar of the wind. So I headed for the plains."

But the lure of the rodeo and wild west show circuit was greater than Milt supposed. Before long he hooked up with another show called Texas Bud Snell's. The arena consisted of 300 feet of ten-foot canvas side wall, about 30 ten-foot posts, with six old-time oil lights hung up on poles in order to light the 40 by 60-foot rope arena, and a small folding ticket box. Snell had eight or ten very hard to ride bucking broncs, and offered $50 for any outsider who could ride his prize horse.

Milt stayed with this show only one summer, then landed in BoogerRed's Bronc Show, of about the same type and caliber. But he moved around a lot, looking for just the right show.

"I worked for the Rose Killen Wild West Show, M.L. Clark's Circus, Col. Cummings, and Col. Zack Mulhall who had the big wild west show at the Lt. Louis, Missouri, World's Fair in 1904. It was at the fair that Texas Bud rode his horse over the big ferris wheel as a publicity stunt. It was here too, that I met the great Will Rogers."

Milt met someone else at the St. Louis World's Fair he met Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Several years earlier the two outlaws had settled in Argentina, and they filled young Milt's head with tales of the Pampas. They invited him to join them there, and he promised that one day he would visit.

"From St. Louis it was back to the ranches in Texas for a spell, then to the 101 Ranch at old Bliss, Oklahoma, in 1905. There I first met Tom Mix, who was also working for the 101 Ranch. Bill Pickett was there and many others. I was with the Miller Brothers-Joe, George, and Zack-many years, right or wrong, 1905 through 1908."

Bill Pickett was the great black rodeo performer who became the first man ever to bulldog a steer by biting its upper lip! Milt was the second. The steer was bull dogged in the usual fashion, then, with its head pulled back, Pickett would bite the steer's upper lip, and throw his arms free, holding the steer by his teeth!

Milt finally managed the trip to South America that he had promised Butch and Sundance.

"It had been in the winter of 1908 and 1909 (November and December in 1908 and January and February in 1909) when I made my first trip to South America, along with a group of the greatest ropers and riders known to the rodeo world. The show was promoted by Mr. 0. Matalley, a South American promoter, who had made a deal with J. Ellison Carroll to bring a group of American cowboys to South America.

"In that group was Joe Gardner, one of the old-time steer ropers; Henry Grammer, a man who feared neither man nor beast and was a great bronc rider and steer roper; and the wildest cowboy who ever lived, the great Clay McGonigal, bronc rider and steer roper, who in later years became a bank robber. . . . Incidentally, Clay McGonigal and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had been very good friends before Butch left the States for South America, so Butch showed up often at the Sportivia [a race track at Buenos Aires].

"I, too, considered Butch Cassidy as a friend. He robbed banks, trains, but it is known he never took a life in doing so. May his soul rest in peace."

When Milt first wrote me in about 1963, he agreed with me that Butch and Sundance had not been killed in Bolivia. For one thing, the so-called gun battle at San Vincente, Bolivia, which allegedly killed the two "bandidos yanqui," is said to have occurred November 7,1908. Milt was with both men at the Sportivia in the spring of 1909.

In the summer of 1965 1 found an opportunity to meet Milt for the first time in person. He was coming West to attend the Cheyenne Frontier Days, and I arranged to meet him at the Union Pacific depot at Green River, Wyoming, and arranged to have a room for him at the Tomahawk Hotel.

When Milt walked through the doors into the depot, I recognized him at once, for he sent me his photo; but I was still unprepared for the sight of him. He was a big man, over 200 pounds, but solid, with tanned skin and dressed nattily in cowboy hat, western shirt, suspenders, and a beaded Indian tie. It surprised me further to see him hobbling along on one crutch under his left arm. Later he would explain why.

Both of these old-time cowboys agreed upon one thing: Butch Cassidy didn't die in South America. Both had known him well in later years.

Milt knew a whole lot about Butch Cassidy, especially his South American years, and I wanted that information. We struck a deal. Milt promised to give me the information in detail and not publish it himself, in return for which I agreed to research the genealogy of the Hinkle family. So it was that, when Milt published an article in the fall issue of Old West magazine in 1965, not long after our visit, he gave the "accepted" version of Cassidy's death:

"In 1909, in Argentina, he and his pal, the Sundance Kid, started terrorizing people with their train robbing, as well as hijacking the paymaster's money belonging to railroad construction workers, and every other kind of crooked deal that occurred to them. They were hunted by the soldiers, and finally found. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were shot after a night-long siege close to LaPaz, Bolivia in 1909. The graves of both, with weather-beaten boards as headstones, are there in the shadow of the mountains, unless they have been shaken down by the'ever-blowing winds from the Andes."

- Shortly after the article appeared, I received a letter from Milt, in which he wrote wryly, "Old Butch would be proud of me, killing him off like that. But then, that's the way he wanted people to believe."

Milt's second trip to South America occurred in 1913. He had just finished a show with the Miller Brothers on October 13 when he got the call to go with the show and was told to show up at New York City. Milt tells the rest of the story:

"The part of the show that D.V. Tantlinger and I were responsible for made the trip to New York City in good shape, and we were ready to sail on November 1, 1913, on the Varsara from Pier 9 in Brooklyn for South America.

"In New York, our coaches were met by Edward Arlington who, with his father, George, was half-owner of the 10 1 Ranch Show.... Both Arlington and the Miller Brothers were good friends of Bat Masterson, who was at that time living at 300 West 49th Street in New York City. Bat was working for the morning newspaper, The Telegram, now called the Sun-Telegram, and he had come to see our show off.

"Edward Arlington was standing by the loading platform while the people were going aboard ship. He was talking to Bat when Chester Byers and I walked up to talk to him. Chester and I were introduced to Bat as the star performers with the show, as Chester was then the Champion Trick Roper of the World. I was really stunned, and I said, 'After all of these years, I get to meet and shake the hand of the man my dad defeated as Sheriff of Ford County, Kansas.'

"Bat's answer was a cool, 'No doubt you are the son of George Hinkle. Which one of his women was your mother ?'

"Before I had time to get angry, he went on to say that if I was anything like my dad, I was a mighty man. 'You can see George in you, looking into the past.' . . . Bat left the ship and we sailed."

During the twenty-five day trip, Milt was elected "sheriff 'of the ship, and when they crossed the Equator, it was his job to make "arrests" and to see that the "prisoners" were ducked in the big canvas tank of water provided for the occasion. This was calculated to relieve the tension of what proved to be a rough voyage. The seas were high and five days out of New York one of the Indians-who were relegated to steerage deep in the holdbroke out with smallpox. Soon after, four of the Indians died and were sewed up in canvas and buried at sea. Hank Durnell, one of the ropers, contracted it, too, and was so sick he begged to be thrown overboard.

After several stops in Brazil, they arrived at Buenos Aires only to encounter more problems. They hid the smallpox from officials, but inspectors discovered that Otto Kline's yellow trick-riding-horse had glanders and informed them that all of their horses would have to be destroyed and then burned. Milt was dispatched with a fistful of money to purchase a whole new remude, and the show was saved.

They set up at the "Park of the Japanese" in Buenos Aires and opened to a big crowd. Milt's wife, Iona (he would -marry three times), whom he had met in Canada, helped operate the Water Show, another concession in the park.

"The next Sunday, Mr. Reginal Casey, a big rancher we had bought the stock from, came to visit our show.... This night I speak of was the same night the big tenfoot alligator bit off Bert Swan's arm, just above the elbow. Bert had a show on the carnival midway, where he kept the alligator in a tank filled with water. Bert would go in and wrestle the alligator. He would get hold of the long jaws, then turn the alligator over on its back. But poor Bert's hands slipped that night, and the brute took off his arm. The water in the tank was instantly red with blood, and the audience went wild....

"Ray Chandler came to me that afternoon [a few days later] and asked if I thought I could wrestle the big alligator. I thought about it for a moment, remembering I had watched how Bert had done it, and I made up mind that I could do it as well-if they paid enough-so I told Toy I would attempt it....

"I lucked but after jumping on the back of the big reptile, and I got my hold at once. With a good firm grip on his jaw, it was easy for me to turn him on his back there in the shallow pool. I knew that I would 'luck out' with God's help, and I did. After I had rolled the brute over, I made the fastest time on record getting out of there. The people went wild and gave me a big hand. It got the Park plenty of publicity, and from that night on we had capacity crowds."

Milt had been invited to spend some time on the ranch of the Englishman Reginald Casey near Rawson, Argentina.

"So, came Sunday, I stepped on the 1:45 a.m. train for Rawson. I had my saddle, ropes, and other equipment with me that I thought I might need.

"Waiting to greet me at the station were Mr. Casey and his bookkeeper, Pat Drake, from London, England. They were driving the finest pair of matched horses I ever saw, and they were hitched to a landau- rig. The driver, a beautifully dressed gaucho, sat in a seat by himself. Another gaucho loaded my belongings in the rig, and we started for the ranch in grand style. Several gauchos, all spendored up, rode behind and on either side of the laudau. All horses traveled at a gallop."

Mr. Casey brought Milt to a feria, or market place, where he introduced him to over 300 gauchos and their families, all dressed in colorful costumes. In the midst of this crowd, Mr. Casey challenged Milt to ride his worst bronc, corn fed and ornery, a horse they called Kazeka.

"I got Kazeka saddled without any trouble. He was a big sorrel about nine or ten years old, and he had a fighter's gleam in his eye. But he never made a move until I was seated in the saddle, and the other man, the snubber, had ridden out of the way.

"Then all hell broke loose. Kazeka bucked, he balked, he stood on his head, he sunfished-in fact, he showed me every trick I had ever seen a horse pull, but thanks be, I was familiar with every trick he knew and anticipated them a split-second before he pulled one, trying to unseat me.... In about thirty seconds, that seemed like thirty minutes, Kazeka realized he was beaten, so he quit.... He was halter-broke, so as I stepped off his back, I patted him on the forehead and got a rousing cheer from the audience .... I led Kazeka up to where Mr. Casey was standing and told him he had a fine horse. 'I would like to take him back to the States with me.'

"Mr. Casey said quickly,'He is yours."'

Milt rode several other broncs, sometimes firing his Colt.45 in the air, to the crowd's delight, and also did some bulldogging and steer roping. Mr. Casey eventually presented Milt with seventeen horses as outright gifts and shipped them express from Rawson to Buenos Aires.

Now all of this Milt told me, and I took it at face value, but he produced proof of his claims in the form of a yellowed newspaper clipping from the Hiberno Argentine Review, dated December 26, 1913, which read, in part:

MILTON D. HINKLE, THE WORLD'S

Champion buck jump rider

and steer thrower, paid a visit to

at the invitation of Don Reginald

Casey. Mr. Hinkle, who is of Irish

descent on his mother's side, had an

opportunity of seeing something of

Argentine camp life, where things

are, however, done on a somewhat

smaller scale to what he had been

which he hails in Texas, USA, the

X IT Ranch, covers some 500 square

leagues.

On Monday, after an excellent breakfast with a fine fat lamb roasted on the asador, the assembled guests drove over to the feria grounds belonging to Messrs. Keating and Sangiani, where some four or five hundred people had gathered to give a welcome to the stranger who had come down from Buenos Aires to give them an exhibition of his skill.

Contingents came from the neighboring estancias and other towns, sent their representatives, as it was known that some of the worst reservados (broncs) in the surrounding districts would be brought in to test the skill and endurance of the venturesome rider. The principal of these, a handsome and powerful chestnut, well known as the terror of the district, having unseated every domador who has attempted to ride him, was the means of showing Mr. Hinkle's magnificent horsemanship....

Later in the day, Mr. Hinkle was presented with the chestnut he had ridden so well, and Don Tormay and Don Casey also asked him to accept a couple of handsome reservados as a slight memento of a very pleasant afternoon.

On Tuesday, Mr. Hinkle gave a private exhibition of riding buckjumpers and paid a visit to the estancia of Doha Marianna B. Casey, where a most enjoyable and sumptuous breakfast was partaken of. The rest of the day was occupied in a quiet ride around the estancias. On Wednesday, accompanied by a cavalcade of horsemen, he rode to the station and left for Buenos aires, with a hearty round of cheers and the good wishes of the large number who had assembled to bid him goodbye.

With Milt in South America was one of his best friends, a superb cowboy named Harry Smith. His real name was Harum Sterling, and he had good-cause to change his name, for he had killed a man in 1911. He took the name Harry Smith because he had his initials, H.S., tattooed on his left arm.

Harry walked into a livery stable at Mexia, Texas, followed by his dog, Old Pal. The livery owner didn't like Harry's dog, half-bulldog, half-leopard spotted cow-dog, and he opened a box stall and released his own pit-fighting bulldog which had killed six other pit bulls in matches. Old Pal began to get the best of the pit bull, and the owner picked up a pitchfork with which to stab the dog. Harry took the pitchfork away from him, and the man ran into his office and retrieved a six-gun. Harry was faster and shot the man in the heart. Old Pal killed the bulldog, too, and two witnesses saw it all.

Harry left Texas and joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and while with the show married Goldie Griffith, the Champion Cowgirl Bucking Horse Rider of the World, on horseback at the old Madison Square Garden. (Ironically, at about the same time, Harry's sister, Edythe Sterling, was marrying silent film cowboy actor and rodeo cowboy Art Acord on horseback in the arena of the Pioneer Days Rodeo in Salt Lake City.)

Harry joined the Miller Brothers 101 Wild West Show in 1913. On October 13, 1913, a rainy day in Houston, Texas, Milt Hinkle stepped down from his gray horse to find the guns of two big detectives. Because he was wearing white angora chaps, such as Harry Smith wore, they mistook him for Harry. A lady pointed out that they had the wrong man, and, pointing at Harry, said, "That's the one!" Harry tried to duck under the sidewall of a tent and one of the policemen aimed at him with his gun. "For some reason," wrote Milt, "I bumped into the cop as he Pulled the trigger. The bullet hit Harry in the left leg high up, but it didn't stop him. He mad( his way to the stock cars.

"When we loaded the horses, Chester Byers and Amos Clayton saw him and go him to lay low, and when the train was loaded, Chester and Clayton put him in an empty boxcar that was marked dead-head to Chicago. They gave Harry two bottles o milk and some bread, and he arrived four days later in Chicago where his wife lived with her mother. Goldie cut the bullet out of his hip."

After Harry healed, he decided to join Miltand the 101 Show in South America to let things cool down in the States. We came the last Sunday night performance o the show in Buenos Aires, Milt was getting ready to leave for the Casey ranch. E Bowman and Harry Smith were going with him, and they started to drive Milt's stock out of the horse tent when Ed Arlingtoy appeared and demanded $100 for a fee( bill. Milt lost his temper and cursed the man whom had used the horses for free and now demanded a feed bill be paid for them

Milt directed Ed Bowman and Harry Smith to proceed with the horses. At this point, Tantlinger and Bob Anderson-the latter of whom had been feuding with Milt-and several others stepped in and tried to stop Harry Smith. Ed Arlington yelled out, loud enough for all to hear "Harry, you know you're wanted in the United States for murder, so you'd better watch what you do."

Harry yelled back, just as loud, "And I’ll be wanted for murder in this country, too if you don't get out of my way!"

"I saw that Harry was so mad he had tears in his eyes, and I knew this to be a danger point, so I told him to keep moving. Harry had made several friends while with the show, but one in particular that he went around with. They had been to parties together and got to be pretty good pals, and just about the time our departure caused such a ruckus, up stepped this friend of Harry's, and he proceeded to take command. First, he told the gaucho to get off his horse, and then he mounted and rode over to me. He took my 30-30, and I saw that he also had a pistol. His instructions then were, 'Let's ride!'

"By this time the police had arrived, but so had Mr. Casey, and when he spoke to the police, they stepped back, so we rode out of the Park with no more trouble.

"I think I should explain here that the man who gave the command, 'Let's ride,' had been one of the lieutenants of the well known Butch Cassidy Gang, and he had heard this same command given many times by Butch when he headed his notorious band of desperadoes who robbed banks and trains, and stole cattle. His hideout was in the Jackson Hole country of Wyoming, and since he was one of Cassidy's head men, he had come to Argentina with much wealth. Here he had lived as a ranchman for several years....

"We made the trip cross-country to the Casey ranch without any trouble, taking two and one-half days. I did not know who Harry's friend was who helped us the night we left the Park, until Harry told me....

"When my good friends, Harry Smith and Ed Bowman, left me, after helping me bring my stock to the Casey ranch, I gave each one of them a good saddle horse. They went with the friend of Butch Cassidy to his spread near Bahia Blanca, where they were to break horses and skin wild cattle for their hides. It was some time before I saw them again."

Privately, Milt revealed tome the identity of Cassidy's lieutenant: he was none other than Harvey Logan, a.k.a. Kid Curry. Later this was confirmed for me by Logan's grandson, Duane Moran, who verified that Kid Curry-known in south America as Andrew Duffy-married an Argentinean girl and fathered eight children before dying of natural causes at the age of seventy-nine on his estancia near Bahia Blanca.

Milt trailed a herd for Reginald Casey across the Pampas from Las Heras, across the Rio Choco north to the town of Las Plumas, to the Rio Chubut (where Butch and Sundance had established their ranch in 1902), eventually arriving at the Casey ranch at Santa Rosa in February 1914.

Mr. Casey talked Milt into staying in Argentina for a while and trying his hand at ranching. They had been having dinner at a lavish nightclub when Casey made the offer. "Mr. Casey ... told me that he had just received word that Tex Rickard had sailed for the States, having sold his interest to the company he worked for. While in South America, Tex had made his headquarters in Buenos Aires, and he and Mr. Casey were pretty good friends.... Now that Tex had sailed for the States, Mr. Casey said that Tex had left plenty of cheap land that could be bought, also that it was all good cattle country, and that the price of that land would be high just as soon as the railroad, which Tex had gotten started before he left, was finished."

Tex Richard owned, in addition to the property in Argentina, a huge estancia in Paraguay. His Argentine holdings had been acquired for him by none other than Butch Cassidy, who also held a percentage interest in the ranch operations. But Cassidy and Rickard had decided to go into partnership in a mining venture at Goldfield, Nevada, and so sold out in South America. Rickard is best known as a promoter, having promoted such championship boxing matches as the Jeffries-Johnson fight at Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910. Rickard numbered among his friends, in addition to Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp, and Bat Masterson. He was once rumored to have married lady outlaw Etta Place, but though he knew her, no such marriage occurred.

Milt Hinkle returned to the United States with a new title, by which he would be known ever after-The South American Kid.

There was an aftermath to this story that bears repeating. In the mid- I 920s, Milt returned to Buenos Aires with Art Acord's wild west Show. Art Acord, a Utah cowboy who became a western movie star rival of Tom Mix, had first married the sister of Harum Sterling, alias Harry Smith, and later Louise Lorraine, who played the first "Jane" in the Tarzan movies opposite Elmo Lincoln.

There was quite a gathering at the Sportivia that year as some members of the Wild Bunch assembled to participate in Art's show. The livestock was provided by Kid Curry from his estancia at Bahia Blanca, and Butch Cassidy was also present as a spectator.

When the show closed, the "boys" had a wild party, and there was some inebriated reminiscing, during which Art Acord's wife's nephew---of whom he had charged questioned whether Butch and his friends had ever held up a bank. The youth's doubt soon grew into a challenge. Under the leadership of Butch Cassidy-now approaching sixty years of age-the men organized a "gang," sort of a "Wild Bunch IL" and rode to an outlying town in Argentina. The "gang" consisted of Butch Cassidy; Kid Curry; Art Acord; Art's nephew, Harry Smith; Clay McGonigal; and-Milt Hinkle.

The result of the escapade was a daring daylight bank robbery. "It was the damnedest and most foolish stunt I ever pulled," Milt said. "I had never done anything like that before, and I sure as hell never did anything like that again!"

The story of Milt Hinkle cannot be told in one installment. His life was an incredible series of events and adventures. He was a bronc rider, bulldogger, steer-roper, rodeo clown, movie actor, range cowboy, boxer, wrestler, stage performer, rancher, stunt rider, promoter, and much, much more. The stories are legion. There was the time he bulldogged a steer from an airplane in Mexico for the benefit of Pancho Villa, and drove his hip bone out of the socket (In later years, he had to walk with the aid of a crutch.), and was nursed to health by Etta Place. Then there was the time that he worked in films with Charlie Chaplin. Mae West once invited him to "come onup and see me sometime," and there was the time he boxed with the champ, Max Baer, and. well, you get the idea.

There was a great day in my life, too ---the day I met Milt Hinkle. I have no doubt that my great old friend is somewhere up there in that Big Range in the Sky, riding point for the Boss of the outfit.

Sources:

1. Personal communication with Milton D.

Hinkle and Din Moran

2. Articles by Milt Hinkle:

"A Texm Hits the Aimpas," Old West, Fall

1965

"The Kit Carson Wild West Show," Fronner

Times, April-May 1964

"Ways of a Roving Cowboy," The West

"Swashbuckler Tom Mix," Tme West, July-

August 1967

"101 Ranch Stam* Wild West," Frontier

"Me Way a Wild West Show Operated,"

Frontier Tunes

"Spaldley of the 101," True West, September-

October 1964

"Dodging a Necktie Party," Old West, Fall

1968

"Cowbviing Sure Used to Be NW'True West,

January-February 1971

"Bulldoggers!" True West, November-

December 1967

"Back WW'True West, January-February

1963

"Rough String Rider," Frontier Times

"I Knew Them All," True West, January-

February 1964

"Winning or Losing," Frontier Times

" Life of a Rodeo Gown," Frontier Times

'The Dusky Denm" The West, July-August

1961

"Buckaroo and Bobwire," True West, March

April 1972

"Rodeo Personalities," The West, May-June

1970