In one famous (though fictional) movie scene, Logan challenges Butch — the outfit’s titular leader — to a fight for control of the gang.
The ‘Fort Worth Five.’ Five members of The Wild Bunch gang. Photographer unknown.
Photo: Fort Worth, Texas (1900). Seated left to right: Harry “the Sundance Kid” Longabaugh;
Ben “the Tall Texan” Kilpatrick; Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy.
Standing: Will “News” Carver, and Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan.
“Guns or knives, Butch,” Logan’s basso rumbles.
“Neither?” Butch answers plaintively
“Pick.”
“I don’t want to shoot with you, Harvey.”
“Anything you say, Butch,” Logan intones, pulling a huge, gleaming knife from his belt.
Cassidy, surveying the sheepfaced gang members around him says, “you guys can’t want Logan?!“
“Well,” answers “News” Carver, “at least he’s with us, Butch, you’ve been spending a lot of time gone.”
And there it was. The gang was biding their time, hiding out, but all together. Butch, their leader, was hiding out in a different way…elsewhere, without them.
A restored mugshot of Butch Cassidy at the Wyoming Territorial
Prison, Laramie (1894).
He wasn’t there so he couldn’t lead. He was apart, separate, and so remote and out of touch that the gang he’d formed had turned to a new, if lesser, boss. Logan may not have been as charming, nor as charismatic. Indeed, he may not have had any real leadership qualities — save one: he was present. He was willing to take on the responsibilities of leadership and take the gang out, against their former leader’s orders, to plunder the Union Pacific’s Flyer.
Union Pacific ‘Overland Flyer’ leaving Oakland, CA. (1906). Library of Congress collection.
We all know what happened next.
“First we’ve got to discuss the rules,” Butch says, approaching Logan.
“Rules!” Logan grates incredulously. “Rules? In a knife fight?”
Now close enough, Butch kicks Harvey square in the balls — causing every man in the audience to gasp in unison.
“Somebody count 1, 2, 3!” Cassidy shouts and Sundance staccatos, “1-2-3! whereupon Butch K-Os the still-gasping Logan with a two-fisted cross.
Then, having reestablished leadership, “News” fills him in on what Logan’s plan for robbing the Flyer had been.
“Harvey thought of that?” he says of the plan to rob the train in both directions.
“Well boys,” he continues, “that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Of course, that plan ultimately leads to the long, endless posse chase, and to Butch and Sundance repeating over and over, “who are those guys?”
The query most useful for us, as men, is this: if we’re not leading effectively… if we’re hiding out, failing to connect to our friends, or family, or the men in our lives, will our posse be coming after us? Will they drag us back into the arena and demand that we fight for our right to lead? Will they challenge us? Or will they simply carry on without is, having chosen, or simply followed, a new leader?
When it comes to our teams, our families, those we lead in any capacity, we must never allow ourselves to be so remote, to hide out so effectively, that we look at our posse — those who care about us the most — and find ourselves saying, “who are those guys?”
