Chapter Seven

“Hello …?”

I’m awoken at 5:30 p.m., well before sunset, with a headache among other ills. My eyes hurt from too much dreaming and, while asleep, I somehow sprained an ankle. I sit up, crack neck and back, and draw the curtains open to watch the sun set violet. The streets empty, then fill with lamplight. A few stragglers drag themselves home late to dinners kept warm in the oven. I make out a stick lady struggling, two-fisted, with a puppy on a leash. She snaps the pup’s head back as it noses a passing stranger.

When darkness descends and dinners are served, it’s late enough to venture outside free of identification, late enough to be free of prying commuter eyes, eyes that rise briefly with disdain to gaze upon the unchained, like myself, as the wretched slaves slouch homeward after a day of pointless labor.

The Lincoln County, New Mexico, that Billy the Kid entered in 1877, was a violent and lawless land.³⁷

I dress over my pajamas and stretch on a belt. A baseball cap organizes my hair. Last, but not least, I don a pair of latex examination gloves. I squeeze out of my room into the foyer. Before opening the door, I brace for the smell of the dim, depersonalized hallway. Yes, they vacuum the rug twice a week, but it smells so … peopled. I stand before the door, gloved hand upon the knob. My heart beats. I feel dizzy. I take a deep breath and swing open the gate.

My worst fears are immediately realized. I try to move back, but my weighty momentum has shifted me too far forward. I right myself, but it’s too late. The door shuts loudly behind me. Standing by the elevator, she peers over, and narrows her eyes.

Regardless of the crime (murder, theft, bodily disfigurement), few offenders ever suffered punishment in Lincoln. It wasn’t until 1877 that anyone bothered to build a jail of sorts. A hole in the ground was dug and covered with a tarp. This served as the only stockade in all of Lincoln County, an area which encompassed almost half of New Mexico.³⁸

“Walter,” she confirms.

“Mrs. Moss.” I pocket my gloved hands. She eyes me suspiciously. “How are you today?” I ask.

“As fine as could be expected,” she sighs with a pained look that quickly changes to impatience. “Are you going down?”

“Yes.”

“Well then hurry over, the elevator’s here.”

One local ruffian, convicted of murder and subsequently pardoned, was defended with these words, “You never saw a better fellow than Ham anywhere; he gets mad quick, and shoots quick, but he’s a good shot and never cripples. I really think he is sorry for it afterward when he cools off.”³⁹

We descend slowly. I hover near the elevator door. She wears a perfume that reminds me of my maternal grandmother when I went to visit her at the Saint Antony Home for the Aged. I remember her distinctly emphasizing that the home was named for Saint Antony of Padua and not Saint Antony the Abbot. Antony of Padua is the patron saint of the poor. Antony the Abbot is the patron saint of grave diggers.

Retirement homes and hospitals have always scared me, especially the florid emanations—like a mix of cheap air freshener and roach balm. What I fear most, of course, is what such malodors mask: death and disease, microscopic bacteria squirming aloft among the dust waiting to be breathed into some fertile host. One mere particle would have a field day in my abundant anatomy. My grandmother began as a nurse at Saint Antony and ended up as a patient. The widow Moss reeks of the same deadly redolence. Within the ugly confines of the elevator, I breath slowly through the mouth.

But Billy had worse dangers to fear in Lincoln than short-tempered pistoleers. The Lincoln County War he so eagerly hurried to join was about to explode into one of the bloodiest range wars in the history of the Southwest.⁴⁰

“Just getting up?” She asked.

“Oh no, got up with the sun, like every morning. Been working at home all day.”

“You look tired. Where are you off to this evening?”

“Now? Well …” I pull out a hand to scratch my head but quickly return it. “I’m taking a course at Metro College. I just signed up.” She eyes the surgical glove.

“Oh yeah, and what course is that?”

“The course? It’s a History course, Mythology of the American Southwest, graduate school. They may let me teach soon.”

“They would.”

“I’m thinking of becoming a professor.”

“You don’t say. I wonder what your parents would have said to that?”

I stand by the door like a dog with a full bladder.

On the road into Lincoln, Billy, now armed with an antiquated .36 caliber Colt Navy, met up with the outlaw Jesse Evans, who had just signed up as a mercenary for the Murphy/Dolan gang. Billy gave his name as William H. Bonney. It was the first known usage of the formal alias he would keep for the rest of his short life. Evans said they could always use another gun, although he doubted the accuracy of Billy’s old percussion pistol.

“You don’t want to test it,” responded Billy.

Jesse explained that they were set on killing one John H. Tunstall an Englishman who had settled in the valley. The outsider had set himself up in direct competition with Murphy and Dolan, also known as ‘The House’ (so-called for the court-like structure built in Lincoln, the largest building in the one-street town, and from which they ruled the region). Billy said he needed to meet a man before killing him. It was bad luck to kill a stranger. Little did the Kid know that the strange Englishman would soon become the father that this poor orphan lad never had.⁴¹

“I remember your parents. They were such wonderful people, your father and mother, not like couples today always screaming and yelling and blaming each other for what they don’t have. The co-op could use more people like your parents. It’s a shame what happened. Think how things might have turned out had they not …”

The door opens.

“Aren’t you getting out?”

I step back. “Oh no, you go. Got to go back up. Forgot my books, silly me. But have a good day Mrs. Moss.”

“A good evening, Walter, it’s after six. Some of us get out during the day.”

Even with John Chisum established as the cattle king of the valley, there was still opportunity west of the Pecos. One such opportunist, Major Lawrence G. Murphy, rested out the Civil War at Fort Stanton, a frontier outpost, while feasting his eyes on the small town of Lincoln nine miles east. As the county seat, he envisioned Lincoln as his base for controlling half of New Mexico. As soon as the war ended, he left the military, but used his connections to enter into a lucrative business of selling beef to an army that was now free to turn its attentions toward ridding the Southwest of the pesky Apache. Instead of building his own ranch and going into direct competition with the well-stocked Chisum, Murphy came up with a novel way of acquiring the extensive numbers of cattle needed to fulfill his contracts to the U.S. Army. After the Civil War ended, thousands of ex-soldiers migrated West in search of employment. Well armed, without direction, and often starving, the ex-major recruited them for a new war, one far less dangerous and far more profitable. They already knew how to fight, but Murphy did need to train them for a new skill: cattle rustling.⁴²

Entering the friendly confines of my dark apartment, I peel the gloves off, deposit them in the waste bin, and make my way through the crowded blackness to my room. The answering machine blinks its red beacon. No need to check the message. I know who it is.

Soon Murphy’s military contracts expanded to flour, corn and other staples including lucrative (and dubious) arrangements with the Mescalero Apache Indian Agency. He over-counted Indians, falsified vouchers, and inflated beef weights. He left the Indians with little and the government paying a lot. The local civilians in Lincoln didn’t fare much better. Murphy soon had a monopoly on all goods coming in and out of the area. At “The Store” local farmers and ranchers purchased goods on credit. Backed by “The Law” (and hired guns if need be), Murphy foreclosed on their farms and ranches when they were unable to pay his exorbitant borrowing rates. If that wasn’t enough, he opened “The Bank” and tempted locals to borrow relatively small amounts of money against all their equity. With the younger, but no less ruthless, Jimmy Dolan, Murphy’s protege and partner, “The House” dominated the economics and politics of the region.

This is the world into which one naive but well-intentioned Englishman rode with plans to set up shop, all in the name of healthy competition. His name was John H. Tunstall, and he viewed America as most immigrants of the day: a land of opportunity, where hard work and fair play were rewarded and the corruptions of the old world were left far behind.⁴³

The flashing red light leads me to my bed. I press the cancel button and erase it. I’m suddenly tired.

“Billy lived with me for a while soon after he came to Lincoln County in the fall of 1877. Just before he went to work for Tunstall on the Rio Feliz. No, he didn’t work for me. Just lived with me and my cousin George riding the chuck line. He didn’t have nowhere else to stay just then.

“It was at Dick Brewer’s ranch, just before Murphy’s bank foreclosed on it, that I first met the Kid. Billy had just been turned down for work by Chisum. He had an old pistol in his belt and rode a horse that Pap Jones lent him when he first come into the territory. It was later that Dick introduced Billy to Tunstall. When Tunstall hired Billy he made him a present of a good horse, a nice saddle, and a new gun, a Winchester carbine. My, but the boy was proud. Said it was the first time in his life he ever had anything given him. He said he could not wait to return the old horse to Pap Jones.”

- Frank B. Coe44

I unplug the phone, don the slumber mask, and insert ear plugs. I wrestle with sleep until dawn’s red fingernails reach through the curtains to scratch my back.