Fifth Grade
Worksheets
Where's Butch?
Butch Cassidy
Reading Comprehension for April 13
Rustling cattle isn't the most brilliant path to success in the world. Neither is holding up banks or robbing trains. In the Wild West, people who made those choices lived in constant fear and hardship. Besides that, people living outside the law aren't known for long lives.
Butch Cassidy might have been a little smarter than the average crook. For most of his outlaw career, he managed to keep from getting caught. He even left behind a little whiff of mystery. Questions about his life and death keep his legend alive even today.
Some things about Cassidy's life are well known. He was born April 13, 1866, to a homestead family in central Utah. He was the oldest of thirteen children. His real name was Robert Leroy Parker. He was known to his family as "Roy." In his early teens, the boy left home. He worked on ranches in the central Utah area.
Parker's first brush with the law came at the age of fourteen. It all started with a pair of holey jeans. In the Wild West, clothing stores weren't popping up on every corner. Roy rode a long way to buy some new britches. When he got there, the store was closed. He relieved his frustration by breaking into the store. He took some jeans. He left a note saying that he would be back later to pay.
The store owner wasn't happy with the break-in. Charges were filed based on the information Parker had left in the note. In court, Roy insisted he had done nothing wrong. In the end, he was cleared, even though he had broken into the store.
About that time the teenager latched on to a new hero. Mike Cassidy was a rancher who specialized in the shady side of the law. The cattle in Cassidy's herd tended to "wander over" from nearby ranches. Cassidy's men were quick with a loop (lariat to rope stolen cattle). They were even quicker with a branding iron. (Stolen cattle were given new brands, making it appear the stock belonged to the thieves.)
Young Roy learned all the tricks of the trade from his new friend. He even took on Cassidy's name. A brief stint as a trainee in a butcher shop had already earned him the nickname "Butch." (It was also an Old West term for a borrowed gun.)
With the help of his mentor in crime, Parker/Cassidy fell in with other career cattle thieves. Some of the "ranch hands" were handy at other trades, like robbing banks and trains. For Butch, it was all pretty much downhill from there.
