At the end the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Paul Newman and Robert Redford reload their six-shooters and exchange a final round of wisecracks, then dash valiantly into a plaza rimmed with Bolivian soldiers. The movie, a box-office smash in 1969 and a late-night television chestnut today, closes with the wounded outlaws facing almost certain doom. The frame freezes before the antiheroes fall, however, leaving open the barest possibility of their survival.

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The movie is based on a true story, which began shortly after the Civil War. The outlaw known as Butch Cassidy, born Robert LeRoy Parker on April 13, 1866, was the eldest of 13 children in a Mormon family in Utah. His admiration for a young cowboy named Mike Cassidy and a stint as a butcher inspired his nom de crime. A stretch in a Wyoming prison for the theft of a $5 horse impelled him toward a life on the run.

The Sundance Kid, born Harry Alonzo Longabaugh in the spring of 1867, was the youngest of five children in a Baptist family in Pennsylvania. After heading west at the age of 15, he ranched with relatives in Colorado, then knocked around the U.S. and Canadian Rockies, working as a drover and broncobuster. He earned his nickname by serving 18 months in jail at Sundance, Wyo., for stealing a horse.

Sundance’s companion in the movie was Etta Place. His companion in real life was an enigma. Although she has been described as a prostitute, a teacher, or both, no one knows her true origin or fate. Even her name is a mystery. The Pinkerton Detective Agency called her Etta on its wanted posters, but she called herself Ethel, which may or may not have been her real name. Traveling as Sundance’s wife, she shared the alias Place (his mother’s maiden name).

Butch and Sundance belonged to a loose-knit gang that included the likes of Elzy Lay, Matt Warner, Harvey ‘Kid Curry’ Logan, Ben ‘Tall Texan’ Kilpatrick and Will Carver. Dubbed the Train Robbers’ Syndicate, the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and the Wild Bunch, the band held up trains and banks and stole mine payrolls in the Rocky Mountain West, making off with a total of $200,000 (the equivalent of $2.5 million today) between 1889 and the early 1900s.

With $1,000 rewards on their heads and the Pinkertons on their tails, Butch and Sundance fled to South America with Ethel in 1901. The movie takes them directly from New York City to Bolivia, but their initial destination was actually Argentina. After steaming into Buenos Aires on the British ship Herminius in March and taking the train to Patagonia in June, they settled in the Chubut Territory, a frontier zone in southern Argentina sparsely populated by immigrants, pioneers and Indians. Although most of the immigrants were Welsh or Chilean, several North Americans had journeyed to the same corner of the world, looking for open ranges. The bandits’ nearest neighbor, for example, was John Commodore Perry, who had been the first sheriff of Crockett County, Texas. Butch and Sundance also traded and socialized with another Texan, Jarred Jones, who lived a two days’ ride north, near Bariloche.

Calling themselves James ‘Santiago’ Ryan and Mr. and Mrs. Harry ‘Enrique’ Place, the Wild Bunch exiles peacefully homesteaded a ranch in the Cholila Valley, raising sheep, cattle and horses. All three got on well with their neighbors, and if anyone came to know about Butch and Sundance’s shady past, it never interfered with those good relations. So highly were they regarded that when Territorial Governor Julio Lezana visited the valley in early 1904, he spent the night in their home, a well-kept four-room log cabin on the east bank of the Blanco River. During the welcoming festivities, Sundance played sambas on his guitar and Lezana danced with Ethel.

Meanwhile, in March 1903, the Pinkertons had sent agent Frank Dimaio to Buenos Aires, after receiving a tip that Butch and Sundance were living in Argentina. Dimaio traced their whereabouts, then cabled his superiors, saying the rainy season prevented him from going to Cholila. Before leaving Buenos Aires, he supplied the police with translated versions of the bandits’ wanted posters.

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