Chapter Two

After years of searching and months of waiting, I finally received today, via the mail, an ultra-rare, original copy of the most underrated book in the 20th century, The Saga of Billy the Kid. It was the first legitimate biography of the most famous outlaw in the late 19th century Southwest, yet, by the time Walter Noble Burns wrote The Saga of Billy the Kid in 1925, the career of America’s first child criminal had been long forgotten by a country caught up in the turbulent twenties. By the depression thirties, however, the country was ready again for outlaw legends. That’s when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures got hold of Burns’ Saga and made the immensely popular film, Billy The Kid.

The Kid was never forgotten again.

He reached out his manacled hands to place his wager of ten matches when, seemingly by accident, he brushed the jack of hearts off on to the floor at Bell’s left side. “Didn’t mean to do that, Bell,” the young boy apologized. “Hard to play with handcuffs on like this.”

“That’s all right, Kid,” replied Assistant Deputy J.W. Bell. “I’ll get it.”

Bell bent over to pick up the card. Holding the deck in his left hand, he reached for the card with his right. To do so, he had to turn slightly away from the table. For a fraction of a second his head dipped below the level of the top, his eyes intent upon the card on the floor.

It was Billy the Kid’s chance in a million for which he had been waiting weeks with the deadly patience of a panther.¹

Billy the Kid: notorious boy bandit of the wild and woolly West. It was said that he killed a man for every year of his life, “twenty-one,” according to old-timers, “not including Mexicans and Indians.” Billy the Kid: his bold escape from the Lincoln County Jail, just days before he was due to hang by the neck until dead, ranks as one of the most infamous escapes in America’s history right up there with John Dillinger’s gun carved out of wood and Ted Bundy’s leap from a second floor court library window. Billy the Kid: hunted down and killed with a proverbial shot in the dark by Sheriff Pat F. Garrett, the man who once was his friend.

As Bell stooped, the butt of his six-shooter projected within reach of the Kid’s hand. Leaning across the table, the Kid snatched the weapon. When Bell raised his head, he was looking into the muzzle of his own gun.²

Billy the Kid: the tragic figure was born Henry Michael McCarty, November 20, 1859, fatherless, in the poverty-stricken, disease-infested Irish Fourth Ward of Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center stands today. Billy the abandoned: his loving mother, Catherine, migrated west with little Henry and brother Joe to drier air in a vain attempt to cure the tuberculosis that racked her once hardy frame only to leave Billy an orphan at the tender age of fourteen. Little lost Billy: thousands of miles from familiar city streets, he was forced to live under a slave-driving stepfather who had gained rights to the child through an arranged marriage bartered by a desperate Catherine in Santa Fe shortly before her death. Ill-fated Billy: he was driven into a life of crime after being duped into hiding stolen laundry by Sombrero Jack, a local Fagin, in the dusty mining town of Silver City. Nobly refusing to snitch on his compadre (who had since skipped town leaving him to hold the bag, literally), Sheriff Harvey W. Whitehill jailed the young lad (his first trouble with the law), and promptly called a grand jury. The boy squeezed his wiry frame through the chimney of the city jail (his first of many escapes) and fled into the badlands of Arizona, a fugitive at the tender age of fifteen. Penniless and unarmed, bad luck Billy stumbled into Indian territory just south of the notorious Fort Apache.

“What the hell, Kid!”

“Do as I tell you, Bell, and be mighty quick about it,” ordered the Kid in crisp, sharp tones. “Don’t make a false move. You’re a dead man if you do. I don’t want to kill you. I’m not going to kill you. You’ve been good to me. Turn and walk out the door. I’m going to lock you in the armory.”³

I take a spoonful of Marshmallow Fluff, a knifeful of Skippy Roasted Honey Nut Peanut Butter, and smear it onto slabs of Hershey’s Milk Chocolate. Only four more portions await me, so I chew slowly, one square at a time, a little extra peanut butter where I can tolerate it, because I need protein for this herculean task of piecing together the life of this badly misappropriated and misused legend of the old Southwest.

Bell faced about silently and marched out the door, the Kid, hampered by his leg irons, shuffling after him. As the deputy turned south in the hall, a sudden surge of anger, chagrin, hurt pride, swept through him. Why had he been such an easy dupe? Deaf to repeated warnings, he had been caught napping. He had fallen into a trap through which he should have seen with half an eye, a trap the Kid doubtless had been planning since their first card game together. This absurd situation was the upshot of his pity, his kindliness. He might have expected it. He had been a soft-hearted fool. What would Sheriff Pat Garrett think of him? What would that devil, Deputy Bob Olinger, say? Was there no way out of this? Desperate thoughts raced through his mind. Could he turn quickly and overpower the Kid? No. That seemed suicide. But if he could trick the Kid as the Kid had tricked him, he might yet save his reputation. Once out of the Kid’s clutches, he would organize the citizens and recapture or kill him. He came to the head of the back stairs just beyond which was the armory door. He shot a furtive glance over his shoulder. The Kid had fallen perhaps six feet behind him, making awkward progress, his ankle chains clattering.

There were not more than a dozen steps from the upper floor to the point where the stairway turned. Once behind the angle of the wall, Bell would be safe. The stairs were his one forlorn hope. Swerving sharply, he plunged down. In one flying leap, he made the bend. His out-thrust hand struck the plastered wall; the heels of his cowboy boots cut splinters from the steps as he lunged for the shelter of the turn. One step more and the wall would shield him …⁴

A mere boy thrown into the world of men and what a world of men was life West of the Pecos. Angry Apaches violently defended the last of their homelands. Prowling gunfighters had free reign to act out an evil normally suppressed in civilized society. Roving bands of thieves plied their trade unhampered by law. But, far more dangerous, were the ruthless cattle barons who gobbled up the landscape before an encroaching civilization leaving many of the original settlers homeless, others dead. The resulting range wars forced the local citizenry to take sides or be cut down in the crossfire. It was a West filled with more perils and danger than any other epoch in American history. This notion of a mere child thrown into such a maelstrom, alone and without guidance, struggling to survive all while attempting to develop a code of conduct from which to behave—this was the essential conflict of the frontier. This manchild’s gestalt symbolized the West’s own struggle to merge into the modern, post-Civil War United States. Billy the Kid, coming of age in the very heart of the West at its wildest, was trying to manage a complex set of loose and ever-changing rules. Yet, a definitive code did exist. Arguments may have been settled with a gun, but they were settled mano a mano. Justice may have been at the end of a rope, but it was swift, final, and unobscured by a sprawling legal system which, in urbanized centers, seemed to breed more crime than it solved. Yes, the West had its own code, but in a sense it was purer, simpler, more innocent compared to the complex set of rules from the older, corrupted East. The code of the West, however, was one the “civilized world” could not tolerate. Those who could not adapt to modernization were doomed. A new West stumbled out of the gunsmoke of the old—a West which would no longer tolerate the likes of its own prodigy, Billy the Kid, infant rascal, boy bandit king.

The bullet struck Bell beneath the left shoulder blade, cut through his heart, and buried itself in the wall beyond.⁵

One crucial task in any research concerning an historical figure whose deeds have sprouted into unruly legend is to separate fiction from fact, myth from reality, story from history. No one has ever reported the authentic story of Henry Michael McCarty (alias Billy the Kid, Kid Antrim, William H. Bonney, El Chivato, or simply, The Kid). I can, because unlike the others, I have no reason to sway from the path of truthfulness. So far I’ve completed a weighty amount of research: books, periodicals, videos, tapes.

But facts can only go so far. I need to get a feel for how things really happened. I must close my eyes, think deeply, and meditate. I must allow his spirit to enter my body, putting myself in his shoes, understanding how he thought, and then stick a needle in my vein and use that blood for ink—except now it’s his blood, the long dead blood of Billy the Kid. I’m speaking figuratively of course. I detest violence.

Jamming Bell’s six-shooter into his belt for emergencies, he stepped to the door of the armory, flung it open, and caught up Deputy Bob Olinger’s double-barrel shotgun leaning against the wall.⁶

Another chocolate fluffer-nutter sandwich, cold milk to smooth the palate, and I ponder the first enticing mystery concerning Billy: the time he spent south of Fort Apache, in the land of the Chiricahua Apache. Led by the infamous Geronimo, these last “hostile” American Indians refused to be settled on the reservation where the land wasn’t fit for crops or hunting. There, they would be left dependent on corrupt Indian agents who skimmed so much off the already meager rations that children and the old suffered from malnutrition and descended into coma-like stupors. While the women gave still-births, once-proud warriors grew listless, aroused only by the firewater which seemed created just for the purpose of making the Indian forget who he was.

Geronimo and his followers would undergo no such indignities. They roamed free within the so-called “Apache Triangle” unimpressed by the soldiers who wore pants with a yellow stripe. In full view of the guards from Fort Apache and Camps Thomas, Bowie, or Grant, the Apache boldly killed any yellow legs who strayed beyond the front gates.

“Garrett went over to White Oaks to-day to order the gallows,” said Olinger. “Kid’s getting scared. Dropped some talk this mornin’ about makin’ some kind of break. Broke open my double-barrelled shotgun and said, ‘Each one of them shells is loaded with eighteen buckshot. Try to escape, I wish you would. I’d like to see you kickin’ at a rope’s end, but, when I come to think about it, I believe I’d rather murder you myself. Go ahead and make your break and you’ll get eighteen buckshot between the shoulder blades.”

Olinger downed the red liquor and ordered another three fingers. “But I’ll get my revenge when the trap falls. I want to see him kick. Little devil. Hope he strangles a good longtime.”

“That’s the stuff,” echoed Jimmy Dolan and J.G. Murphy.

They raised their glasses.

“Here’s to the rope that chokes the life out of the little devil,” said Olinger. Then a sudden crashing noise over in the courthouse startled them.⁷

It was through this desolate country—where water flowed only during the rainy season; where rattlesnakes, scorpions, and cougars ruled the nights, and renegade Apache patrolled the day lying in wait for invading settlers—it was in this land that Billy, then Henry Antrim, roamed. Two crucial years, from age fifteen to seventeen, lost to recorded history. What is known is this: as he walked through the gates of Camp Grant, bystanders wondered from where this strange boy had come. He dressed as a country jake wearing a derby, an oversized jacket, and matching pants rolled up to reveal clumsy city shoes.

“When Henry Antrim came to Fort Thomas and asked for work, he said he was seventeen, though he didn’t look to be a day past fourteen. Didn’t know nothin’ about horses, nothin’ about cattle and could handle neither rope nor gun. We had trouble finding things for the boy to do, because he weren’t no cowboy. Had to let him go though we gave’m money enough for a new set of clothes. Heard later he strayed over to Camp Grant.

“Called him ‘kid,’ because he was so small: no taller than a mule, no heavier than a sack of flour. When they told me later that he was the Billy the Kid, the same one who fought in the Lincoln County War, I said, well doesn’t that beat all. Must’ve grown some.”8

- W.J. ‘Sorghum’ Smith

Yes, he had wandered into the notorious Apache triangle as a boy, but came out two years later man enough to make his home among soldiers whose only relief from harsh army life was drinking, gambling, fighting and whoring. He also came out man enough to commit his first official murder deflating Windy Cahill, the camp blacksmith and bully, with a bullet in the stomach on the night of August 17, 1877.

I, Frank P. Cahill, being convinced that I am about to die, do make the following as my final statement: I was born in the county and town of Galway, Ireland. Yesterday, August 17th, 1877, I had some trouble with Henry Antrem, otherwise know as Kid, during which he shot me. I had called him a pimp, and he called me a son of a bitch, we then took hold of each other. I did not hit him, I think – saw him go for the pistol, and tried to get hold of it, but could not and he shot me in the belly. I have a sister named Margaret Flannigan living in East Cambridge, Mass. and another named Kate Conden, living in San Francisco.9

According to witnesses, Cahill had wrestled young Henry to the ground and began pummeling him with his thick fists. Half his weight, the boy reached for the blacksmith’s own gun. He pulled the hammer back and squeezed the trigger while Cahill was in mid-punch. It was the first time the boy had ever fired a pistol.

Declared an “unjustifiable killing” by a grand jury, Henry was arrested, hand-cuffed, and thrown into the fort stockade which was filled with soldiers—traitors, deserters, and murderers of which he could now include himself, many of whom faced the firing squad. Civilians got the rope.

Old enough to kill,

Old enough to hang. ¹⁰

A few nights later, as Captain G.C. Smith entertained guests in his quarters, shots rang out in the dark. It caused little excitement, but according to army procedure, the young Lieutenant Cheever, officer of the day, was sent out to investigate. He returned to inform Captain Smith that the sentries had fired upon one Henry Antrim, commonly referred to as ‘the kid,’ who had escaped into Apache country on ‘Cashaw,’ civilian John Murphy’s racing pony. Awaiting orders, Lieutenant Cheever was surprised when the Captain simply offered him a fresh drink and told him to rejoin the party.

A week later a trader rode into camp with Cashaw. He said a runaway boy had asked him to return the pony to its rightful owner. Henry was on the run again, without horse or gun, but with outstanding warrants in both Arizona and New Mexico. An unwanted boy, yet a wanted man, Henry was now alone in the wilderness once again and unwelcome in both mining towns and forts. Forced into the life of a desperado there was only one place he knew of where outlaws were welcome. That was in the valley of the Pecos River, where men fought over cattle, land and women, and no one much cared about your past. He had already traveled west to escape Silver City, now he’d have to travel back east through Silver City to get to the Pecos Valley. At least he knew people around Silver City. He planned to rest before traveling through the desert of Jornada Del Muerto (Journey of Death, and later, the White Sands Missile Range). He had never traveled through a desert before, but he figured that there would be fewer Indians there. At the age of seventeen, the kid still had a lot to learn about the Apache.

Olinger ran out of the saloon and crossed the street as old man Geiss, the cook, crossed the yard of the courthouse and appeared at the front gate. “Olinger,” he said stopping the deputy in his tracks, “the Kid has killed Bell.” At the same instant the Kid’s voice was heard above: “Hello, Bob,” said he.

“Yes,” Olinger coolly replied to Geiss as he stared down the barrels of his own shotgun, “and he’s killed me too.”¹¹

My phone rings. The answering machine kicks in.

“Hello … Hello … Hello …?”

Helios rises. His bright eyes reach out over the rows of dark cavernous buildings that make up the Bronx. I could try to sleep or go to the lobby, fetch the mail left uncollected for days, maybe even go out for milk. It’s been a long time since I had fresh milk. I should make up a list and do a real shop. Yet something compels me to turn out the lights and sit here as daylight slowly fills the room. Sunstreams highlight the dust swirling through each beam like newspapers in the wind. Called Mormon rain, it accumulates into devil’s snow on the floor. Drifts form and fill corners, hide beneath the bed and behind the dresser, cling to fallen socks and misplaced paper clips. How can there be so much movement in the air while I sit so still? From where does such charged energy come? What gives the air such life?

I draw the curtains closed, don my slumber mask, insert earplugs, and do battle with sleep.