The Cheyenne Daily Leader News(Ed DeRousse) Large herds of cattle had attracted a great deal of wealth to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Much of that wealth was held in the Cheyenne Bank vault. A band of outlaws had just ridden into town with intent to take that wealth.
Among them was a newly married cowboy with a troubled past he thought he left behind. The cowboy was to meet his new wife and her father for lunch in the building next door to share special news with him.
It was the 20th of March 1870, two months after William Preston Longley and Elizabeth Mary Smith got married. Lizzy had already arrived and was waiting for her husband. Together, they planned to share the news with her father and then the rest of Cheyenne.
The news, Lizzy believed, was going to help the tense relationship between her husband and her father. She was sure of it even though her father had been told of Bill Longley’s troubled past. This news would fix the strained relationship.

Lizzy and Bill had eloped. They met on the 5th. of January. Ten days later they were secretly married. Both were sure the criminal past of the gunfighter, “Wild Bill” William Preston Longley, was over.
Bill’s proposal was still fresh on her mind. Lizzy was waiting at the table where they had their first meal together. The young bride smiled as she remembered his proposal.
“Lizzy, it’s been a week since I saw you looking up at me. That look, it did something to me. I led a bad life. I know it. I figured I’d live it. I had no intentions to have a woman in it. But then I saw you, Lizzy. You, you changed me. Now you own my heart. My past just doesn’t make sense to me anymore.”
“I changed you? How?”
“Outlaws live on the edge. They don’t have a permanent place and are always looking over their shoulders. Someone is forever chasing them to make them pay for their bad deeds. It’s a needlessly hard life. There has to be something better in it. I know there is. Now.”
“And what is that? What does that all mean?”
“It means, Lizzy, I am here to stay! With you. You are an angel, my angel, sent to rescue me.”
“And I did, didn’t I!”
“That day we met, you were fearless. You were sincere. You offered a stranger warmth on a cold day. And food. And safe conversation. I loved you the moment I finished that first meal. And Lizzy, I know you love me.”
“I loved you, Bill Longley, before I met you. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Elizabeth Mary Smith, are you ready? Will you marry me?”
“Let's get started.”

But while the newly-wed was sitting in her father’s restaurant waiting on her husband, something evil was happening in the bank building next door.
Three men walked into the Cheyenne Bank. One of the men drew his pistol, walked up to the cashier, and demanded him to open the safe. When he refused, the robber, pistol-whipped him. One of the patrons turned to flee the bank. He was fired upon and hit in the arm as he ran from the bank screaming.
The outlaws raced out of the bank to their horses.
People were gathering on the street to see what was happening. One observer was from the building next door. She was a young newlywed woman waiting for her husband.
Her eyes connected with one of the fleeing bank robbers.
“I had to Lizzy. They told me they’d kill you if I didn’t.”
As he rode away, bullets flying, he saw the fear and disappointment in Lizzy’s eyes.

Bill Longley would never see his son until he was sentenced to hang in Giddings, Texas, eight years later.
When the Cheyenne Daily Leader reporter interviewed the young newlywed, all she could say was:
“I thought I was enough to change his ways. Now, he will never know his son.”

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