The Americans are certainly hero-worshippers and always take their heroes from the outlaw classes.1
—OSCAR WILDE
THE KID STARTED off 1880 with a wallop. As he was buying drinks for some Chisum cowboys at Bob Hargrove’s saloon in the old quartermaster’s building at Fort Sumner ten days into the new year, a staggering drunk named Joe “Texas Red” Grant started making threats. He removed a pistol from the holster of one of the cowboys and put his own gun in its place.2 When the Kid asked if he could take a look at the pearl-handled pistol, Grant handed it over. The Kid saw that three shots had been fired. He spun the cylinder so that the hammer would strike an empty chamber the next time it was fired, then gave the gun back to the drunk.
A little while later Grant got into an argument with Billy and made the mistake of drawing the gun when the Kid turned his back to leave. The Kid heard the hammer click on the empty chamber and whirled around. Quicker than a jack-rabbit, Texas Red lay dead on the barroom floor with three bullets in his chin. One of the witnesses said a silver dollar would have covered the tight bullet pattern. Grant’s death was only the second murder that the Kid had unquestionably committed.3 Unlike the aftermath of his first killing, that of Windy Cahill back in Arizona, the Kid was not worried about retribution. Most people chalked it up as just another saloon shooting. Asked about the incident, the Kid replied, “It was a game of two and I got there first.”4
At this point, the Kid was spending a lot of his time in and around Fort Sumner. When he was not rustling cattle, dancing, or courting Paulita Maxwell, he often showed up to deal some monte or play a bit of poker at Beaver Smith’s, the most popular drinking and gambling establishment in town. That is where he most likely first encountered Patrick Garrett, a trail driver and buffalo hunter from Texas who had moved to Fort Sumner in 1878.5
Almost six and a half feet tall in an age when men were typically a full foot shorter, Pat Garrett turned heads wherever he went. Women were drawn to the handsome mustachioed fellow with southern manners reflective of his native Alabama roots and upbringing on a Louisiana plantation. The Hispanics dubbed him Juan Largo, or Long John. Garrett loved all the attention.
In Fort Sumner he worked as a cowhand for Pete Maxwell long enough to have a disagreement with him and get fired. When Beaver Smith needed a barkeep at his place, Garrett took the job. Besides serving hard drinks and maintaining order at the saloon, he raised hogs on the side and partnered with Thomas “Kip” McKinney, a native Texan who had run with the Seven Rivers posse down in Lincoln County.
Controversy dogged Garrett most of his life. The story of his shooting another buffalo hunter named Joe Briscoe to death over a campfire argument made the rounds of Fort Sumner. So did rumors that Garrett was a fugitive from justice wanted in an earlier killing and that he had abandoned a wife and family in Texas.6
At some point, Garrett married Juanita Gutierrez, although the exact date and circumstances remain unclear, as does her death, which supposedly occurred only months after they wed.7 If so, Garrett was a widower when he wed Apolonaria Gutierrez, presumably his late wife’s sister, on January 14, 1880, just four days after the Kid plugged Joe Grant. The Garretts’ nuptials in Anton Chico were a double ceremony that also joined Pat’s trusted friend Barney Mason and his betrothed, Juanita Madril.8
In Fort Sumner, Garrett quietly took the stage as yet another actor in the ongoing drama of Billy the Kid. Depending on the audience, he functioned as both protagonist and antagonist. To this day that is how he is viewed. To some, Garrett was a hero, and for others he played the role of villain. Perhaps he was a combination of the two.
Neither Billy nor Garrett has been well served by books and films depicting them as bosom buddies. While Garrett, who rubbed shoulders with several lawbreakers at the saloon, undoubtedly knew the Kid, stories that they rode together and stole cattle have never been proved, even by Garrett’s diligent biographer.9
Certainly both of them frequented the same haunts in Fort Sumner and elsewhere, but the Kid ran with his closest chums, O’Folliard and Bowdre. In fact, the 1880 census for Fort Sumner, San Miguel County, records a William Bonny (sic) living under the same roof as Charles and Manuela Bowdre.10 Besides the misspelled surname, some of the data given to the census taker appear to have come from someone other than the Kid. His age is given as twenty-five, his place of birth Missouri, and his parents are listed as Missouri natives. Next to occupation are the three words “working in cattle,” which of course was at least partially true.11
In early 1880 (or late 1879) the Kid posed in Fort Sumner for what remains the only documented photographic image of him. More than likely, an itinerant photographer took it, using a multilens camera that simultaneously produced four two-by-three-inch ferrotypes, popularly called tintypes. Ferrotypes were easy to prepare. The photographer could have set up the shot, taken the image, developed it, varnished a ferrotype plate, and handed it to the Kid in only minutes at a cost of probably twenty-five cents.12
Like so much else about Billy Bonney, the faded and abused image is an icon that cannot be understood or explained. “I never liked the picture,” Paulita Maxwell said in later years. “I don’t think it does Billy justice.”13 The young man standing with head slightly tilted, Winchester at his side and gun belt riding high on his hip, is, despite Maxwell’s misgivings, forever frozen in time.
While Billy stood for his portrait, Garrett, no longer content to slop hogs and tend bar for the rest of his life, considered his options. By 1880 he had caught the attention of the all-powerful cattle interests that were weary of losing their stock to thieves like the Kid and his lot. At the urging of John Chisum and Joseph Lea, a former Quantrill raider who had become a respectable citizen and huge landowner, Garrett took on George Kimbrell and ran for sheriff of Lincoln County.14 Dolan, by that time owner of both the Tunstall store and the ranch on the Rio Feliz, backed Garrett all the way, as did Boss Catron up in Santa Fe.
Garrett moved to Roswell so he would be eligible to run for office in Lincoln County. Both he and Kimbrell worked hard at courting voters, especially from the Hispanic community since both candidates were married to Hispanic women. Naturally, the Kid campaigned for Kimbrell because it was believed that the sheriff generally “turned a blind eye to the Kid’s movements.”15
On November 2, 1880, the citizens of Lincoln County turned out in big numbers, and as a result, they elected the striking Garrett. Although he would not officially take office until January 1881, Kimbrell straightaway made Garrett a deputy and Catron appointed him U.S. deputy marshal.16 Later in November the Kid and some of his riders stole horses from Alexander Grzelachowski, a Polish merchant in Puerto de Luna and former Catholic priest, called Padre Polaco by everyone who traded at his store.17 The Kid, Dave Rudabaugh, Billy Wilson, and other members of the gang sold some of the horses to Jim Greathouse at the ranch he owned with Fred Kuch on the road connecting Las Vegas and White Oaks.
Newly elected Deputy Sheriff Garrett assembled bands of armed men who went on the hunt throughout the county for the thieves. On November 27, a posse from White Oaks tracked the Kid and his boys back to the Greathouse-Kuch ranch, and a gun battle broke out. During a pause in the action an unarmed Jim Carlyle, a popular White Oaks blacksmith riding with the posse, voluntarily entered the house to discuss terms of surrender with the Kid. Nothing came of the talks, and when Carlyle leaped from a window in an escape attempt, he was shot and killed.18 The standoff ended in a stalemate with each side blaming the other for his death. Most fingers pointed at the Kid, who vehemently denied shooting Carlyle.
The Kid’s protest did not matter. Public sentiment, at least from the Anglo population, had begun to turn against Bonney and his men. As a result, the Kid was on the run, with Garrett posses numbering close to two hundred men in hot pursuit. But even more deadly than the armed riders chasing the Kid was the attack waged by J. H. Koogler, the indignant editor and publisher of the Las Vegas Gazette. In a stinging editorial on December 3, 1880, Koogler took the Kid and his men to task in no uncertain terms: “There’s a powerful gang of outlaws harassing the stockmen of the Pecos and Panhandle country, and terrorizing the people of Fort Sumner and vicinity. The gang includes forty or fifty men, all hard characters, the off-scourings of society, fugitives from justice, and desperadoes by profession.…The gang is under the leadership of ‘Billy the Kid,’ a desperate cuss, who is eligible for the post of captain of any crowd, no matter how mean or lawless.”19
What made this editorial exceptional was that it was the first time ever that Billy Bonney was referred to in print not just as the Kid but as Billy the Kid. The impact of inserting “the” between “Billy” and “Kid” was surprisingly powerful. Now people had a descriptive name that made Billy unique. Beyond the colorful nom de guerre, Koogler’s steady stream of editorials exaggerated the Kid’s activities and fabricated a reputation that he did not deserve. Also, the editorial broadsides, along with the letters Koogler wrote to Governor Wallace pushing for decisive action, had the effect of erasing any thoughts of amnesty for the Kid.
In hope of resurrecting his relationship with the governor, the Kid sent Wallace a letter protesting the bad publicity. “I noticed in the Las Vegas Gazette a piece which stated that Billy the Kid, the name by which I am known in the county, was the Captain of a Band of Outlaws who hold Forth on the Portales. There is no such organization in existence.”20
The Kid went on to plead his case in a lengthy explanation of the Greathouse shoot-out. He explained that the posse shot and killed Carlyle when they mistook him for the Kid trying to escape. He also stated that Chisum was “the man who got me into trouble” and that Deputy Sheriff Garrett took his orders from Chisum.21
The Kid’s words had no effect. Wallace had other thoughts on his mind. On November 12, Harper Brothers, a publishing house in New York, released Wallace’s Ben Hur: The Story of the Christ. The novel was acclaimed by reviewers and the public and became an instant bestseller.22 Content to hold forth at the Palace of the Governors and read his piles of fan mail, Wallace had given up on the Kid. He was not moved. Two days after getting the Kid’s letter, Governor Wallace published a reward notice to be printed in newspapers throughout New Mexico Territory:
BILLY THE KID.
$500 REWARD.
I will pay $500 reward to any person or persons who will capture William Bonny, alias The Kid, and deliver him to any sheriff of New Mexico. Satisfactory proofs of identity will be required.
LEW. WALLACE, Governor of New Mexico.
The manhunt, sweetened by the promise of cash money, was now on in earnest. Garrett pulled together a posse composed of his best men and some Texas stock detectives and cowboys sent by the Panhandle Cattlemen’s Association. They rummaged through the villages and ranches in search of the Kid. When information gathered by scouts and spies led the Garrett posse to Fort Sumner, they took over the old Indian hospital on the eastern side of the fort. Living in one of the many rooms was Charlie Bowdre’s wife, Manuela, and her mother.
Word was that the Kid and his amigos were in hiding out at the Wilcox-Brazil Ranch east of town. Garrett figured if he could lure the Kid, Bowdre, and the others into Fort Sumner, they would head directly to check on Manuela, where the posse waited. He was right.
Garrett sent a local boy to the Kid with news that all was clear in Fort Sumner, that the Texans had gone home and the other posse men had ridden off for Roswell. Garrett’s men, their horses out of sight in Pete Maxwell’s stable, more than likely bound and gagged Manuela, built a fire, checked their weapons, and waited.
On the evening of December 19 there was a big moon, but a thick fog hung over the deep snow that covered the ground.23 Posse lookouts spied dark figures in the distance and then heard horses’ hooves muffled by the snow. Garrett and his men crept outside and took up firing positions.
Six riders approached: the Kid, Tom O’Folliard, Charlie Bowdre, Dave Rudabaugh, Billy Wilson, and Tom Pickett. When they drew closer, Garrett yelled, “Halt!” O’Folliard went for his sidearm, and a barrage of gunfire broke out.24 The surprised riders wheeled about and dashed away through the snow into the darkness, but one horse lingered and came back at a slow walk. Hanging on the saddle was a badly wounded O’Folliard, shot through the chest. Garrett barked for him to throw up his hands, but he was only able to whisper, “Don’t shoot[,] Garrett, I’m killed.”25
They carried O’Folliard inside, laid him near the fire, and went back to playing poker. It was too dark and icy to pursue the other renegades until the morning.
Jim East, a member of the posse, later recalled that O’Folliard remained conscious and managed a few words. “God damn you[,] Garrett, I hope to meet you in hell,” O’Folliard said.
“I wouldn’t talk that way, Tom,” Garrett replied, “you are going to die in a few minutes.”
O’Folliard replied, “Go to hell, you long-legged son-of-a-bitch.”
Shortly after the last exchange, O’Folliard groaned and asked East for some water. He took a sip, fell back on the blanket, shuddered some, and died.26
Garrett paid for a coffin, and the next day some villagers and members of the posse buried O’Folliard in the old military cemetery where Lucien Maxwell and other civilians had been laid to rest near the many soldiers’ graves.
Garrett waited for a break after another heavy snowfall. The Kid and his four men back at the Wilcox-Brazil Ranch plotted their next move. The Kid, devastated by the loss of his best friend Tom O’Folliard, pleaded with Manuel Brazil to ride into Fort Sumner to find out Garrett’s plans. A fearful Brazil complied, but instead of helping the Kid, he reported directly to Garrett and told him where the outlaws were hiding.27
In the early hours of December 23, Garrett’s men surrounded an abandoned one-room stone house at Stinking Springs on Taiban Creek about five miles east of the Wilcox-Brazil house. Garrett told the posse that the Kid often wore a Mexican sugarloaf hat and that if they saw him, they should “cut down and kill him.”28
They dug in and waited for daybreak, and when first light broke, a man wearing a sombrero came outside, carrying feed for the tethered horses. Garrett was convinced it was the Kid. He ordered his men to open fire, and a ring of Winchesters exploded. The man, mortally wounded, staggered inside. It was not the Kid but Charlie Bowdre. The dying Bowdre then staggered outside (some posse members said he was pushed by the Kid) and fell over dead. Garrett later checked the body and found a bloodstained ferrotype of a heavily armed Bowdre and his wife that had been taken a short time before in Las Vegas.29
The four men trapped inside the rock cabin had no place to hide or run. When he saw the Kid trying to pull one of the horses inside, probably for a break-out, Garrett shot the animal, and it fell, blocking the entrance. For most of the day the Kid and Garrett bantered back and forth and exchanged a few slurs. Finally the aroma of cooked bacon and beans that Brazil brought the posse did the trick. The Kid and the others surrendered.30
The four outlaws were taken to Brazil’s ranch house for the night. The next morning, Christmas Eve, the lawmen with their captives and the dead Bowdre in a wagon struck out for Fort Sumner. There they were met by what was described as “a deranged and lamenting” Manuela Bowdre, who “kicked and pummeled Pat Garrett until she had to be pulled away.”31 Jim East and another man carried Bowdre into her room in the old hospital, and as they did, Manuela bashed East over the head with a branding iron. Garrett ponied up for a new suit of clothes for Bowdre, as he had done with O’Folliard, and he also picked up the burial cost.32
Deluvina Maxwell, a Navajo servant who had been taken captive by Apaches as a girl and traded to Lucien Maxwell for ten horses, was especially fond of the Kid. She requested that Garrett allow the Kid to say his farewell to Paulita Maxwell.33 He agreed—it was Christmas Eve after all—and told East and Lee Hall to accompany the Kid to the old officers’ quarters that served as the Maxwell family home. Dave Rudabaugh, who was shackled to the Kid, had no choice but to go along.
Doña Luz Maxwell, Paulita’s mother, asked the deputies to remove the shackles so the Kid and her daughter could have a private moment, but her request was denied. East later described how the Kid and his querida embraced, and “she gave Billy one of those soul kisses the novelists tell us about, till it was time to hit the road for Vegas, we had to pull them apart, much against our wishes, for you know, all the world loves a lover.”34
That afternoon the party, including a wagonload of shackled prisoners, left Fort Sumner for Las Vegas. After spending the night on the road at John Gerhardt’s ranch, they got to Puerto de Luna on Christmas Day in time for a festive roast wild turkey dinner at the Grzelachowski store and home.35 The men ate in two shifts, and Padre Polaco made sure everyone, including the shackled diners who recently had stolen horses from him, had plenty to eat.
When they arrived in Las Vegas on December 26, both Pat Garrett and the Kid were the talk of the town. Many people wanted to buy Garrett and his men drinks, but the Kid, now that he had a price on his head, was also big news. Crowds clamored to catch a glimpse of him being transported to jail. The Kid relished all the attention. The next morning, just after he and the other prisoners were presented with new suits of clothes, the Kid obliged a reporter from the Las Vegas Gazette with a jailhouse interview.36
“You appear to be taking it easy,” the reporter told the Kid.
“What’s the use of looking on the gloomy side of everything?” responded the Kid. “The laugh’s on me this time.” Then, looking around, he asked if the jail at Santa Fe was better than the one at Las Vegas. He also spoke of the big crowd “gazing at me” and suggested that “perhaps some of them will think me half man now; everyone seemed to think I was some kind of animal.”
The reporter agreed that the Kid was no animal and described him as “quite a handsome looking fellow” who looked “human, indeed, but there was nothing very mannish about his appearance, for he looked and acted like a mere boy.”
The following day the reporter showed up again at the train depot before the prisoners departed for Santa Fe. A crowd of onlookers had turned menacing. They wanted the blood of Dave Rudabaugh, often called Dirty Dave because of his poor hygiene. Earlier in 1880, before he hooked up with the Kid, Rudabaugh had killed Las Vegas Deputy Lino Valdez while trying to break a convicted killer out of jail.37 The local sheriff wanted Garrett to surrender Rudabaugh to him for trial, and the angry mob was ready to march him to the windmill in the plaza for a neck stretching.
Garrett finally was able to appease all sides and leave town with all his prisoners, but before that happened, the Kid leaned out of the window of his train car and casually visited with the reporter. “I don’t blame you for writing of me as you have,” the Kid said. “You had to believe other stories; but then I don’t know as any one would believe anything good of me anyway. I wasn’t the leader of any gang—I was for Billy all the time.”38
The Santa Fe New Mexican warmly welcomed the newest residents upon their arrival, which the newspaper explained “created a good deal of excitement and Sheriff Garrett is the hero of the hour.”39
On New Year’s Day 1881, the Kid sent a letter to Governor Wallace from the Santa Fe jail on Water Street, just a short distance from the Plaza and the Palace of the Governors. The one-sentence letter read: “I would like to see you for a few moments if you can spare the time.”40
Wallace could not spare any time. He was not even in town. He was back East, basking in his literary glory. Just before Christmas the first edition of Ben Hur sold out and Harper Brothers scrambled to get more books in print.41 The Kid’s request went unanswered. So did the other three letters he sent Wallace asking for his help over the course of three months before being taken to Mesilla to stand trial for the murders of Buckshot Roberts and Sheriff Brady. The Kid became desperate. He looked for good legal counsel and in a more drastic move planned a jail escape. He started digging a tunnel beneath the cell wall, but it was quickly discovered, and the Kid and his mates ended up in irons and under constant guard.42
On March 4, the day the Kid sent his third letter to Governor Wallace, the inauguration of President James Garfield took place in the nation’s capital. Just five days later Wallace tendered his letter of resignation to Garfield, who formally accepted it on March 17 and appointed Lionel A. Shelton of Ohio as the new governor of New Mexico Territory. Several weeks later, when a reporter told him that the Kid “appears to look to you to save his neck,” Wallace said, smiling, “Yes, but I can’t see how a fellow like him should expect any clemency from me.”43
On March 28, the day after sending his fourth and final plea for help to Wallace, the Kid and Billy Wilson, who was charged with counterfeiting, robbery, and rape, were escorted under heavy guard from the jail to the train depot. When the tracks stopped at the settlement of Rincon, the prisoners were locked in a saloon overnight and the next day spent nine hours with their guards in a cramped stage bound for Mesilla.44
Presiding at the court proceedings in the Third Territorial District Court was Judge Warren Bristol, an ardent foe of everyone the Kid ever respected, especially Tunstall and McSween. The Kid was arraigned in Mesilla on March 30 before Judge Bristol in the murder of Buckshot Roberts at Blazer’s Mill. The Kid entered a plea of not guilty. All others named in the killing, such as Charlie Bowdre, had either been killed or could not be found. When the Kid told the judge he did not have a red cent to hire a lawyer, Ira Leonard was appointed his defense counsel. Leonard did a decent job of proving that Roberts was not killed on federal land as charged and therefore there was no federal jurisdiction. On April 6 the indictment was quashed, and Bristol had to dismiss the charge.45
Two days later the Kid’s trial for the Brady murder commenced. The prosecuting attorney was Simon Newcomb, who had succeeded his good friend William Rynerson as district attorney.46 The actual trial was a mere formality since the Kid had already been tried and found guilty in most of the newspapers that served the Santa Fe Ring and its network.
For this proceeding, Leonard was replaced, and Bristol appointed John Bail and Albert Jennings Fountain as the Kid’s new legal representatives.47 Fountain was a well-known and respected figure dating back to his days as a newspaper editor when he crusaded against Jesse Evans and the infamous banditti. However, neither of the two lawyers was acquainted with the Kid, nor did they know very much about Lincoln County.
On April 9, after just two days of testimony from a few prosecution witnesses and hearing arguments, both sides rested. Judge Bristol gave such narrow instructions in his charge to the jury that they had no choice but to return a predictable verdict. After a short deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict of guilty in the first-degree murder of William Brady and assessed the death penalty as the Kid’s punishment.48
For the very first time in his brief but violent life the Kid had been tried and found guilty. Among the more than fifty individuals indicted for crimes in the Lincoln County War, only the Kid was ever convicted.49
On April 13, the now-notorious young man was brought back to the courtroom for formal sentencing. The Kid knew that the judge would show no mercy. The Kid offered no words to the court. He stood before the bench and listened to Bristol proclaim that “the said William Bonney, alias Kid, alias William Antrim, be hanged by the neck until his body be dead.”50 Sheriff Garrett in Lincoln was to carry out the sentence in May on Friday the thirteenth. “I expect to be lynched in going to Lincoln,” the Kid told a reporter after his sentence was pronounced. “Advise person never to engage in killing.”51
Concerned that some of the Kid’s friends might try a rescue attempt, seven heavily armed guards were assigned the task of returning the condemned man to Lincoln. The Kid, shackled and handcuffed, was placed in a wagon. He was escorted by Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Olinger, Deputy Sheriff Dave Woods, and five other special deputies, including Billy Mathews and John Kinney, the territory’s most successful cattle rustler.52
After an uneventful journey to Lincoln, the Kid was housed in a northeast corner room on the second story of the old Murphy-Dolan store known as The House.53 It had since been sold by Boss Catron and converted into the county courthouse with jail facilities on the top floor. Garrett made sure that the Kid was housed away from the other prisoners. He assigned Bob Olinger and Deputy James W. Bell to guard the Kid around the clock and keep him handcuffed and his legs shackled. Bell was a pleasant man and treated the Kid with respect. Olinger was a different story. He was a bully described as “two hundred pounds of bone and muscle, six feet tall, round as a huge tree trunk, with a regular gorilla-like chest that bulged out so far his chin seemed to set back on his chest.”54 It was no secret that he hated the Kid and blamed him for the death of Olinger’s friend Bob Beckwith at the McSween shoot-out. Every chance he got, Olinger prodded and tormented the Kid.
After just a week of confinement in Lincoln, a routine had developed. Sam Wortley sent the Kid’s meals to the courthouse while the five other prisoners were taken to the hotel to eat. The Kid carefully observed the habits of his guards and on April 28 he made his move. That day Garrett had ridden over to White Oaks to collect some taxes or, as some believe, to buy lumber for a gallows.55
At about five o’clock in the evening, Olinger walked the five prisoners to the hotel for supper, leaving Bell to watch over the Kid. There are many theories about what happened next, but it seems likely that the Kid asked Bell to take him out back to use the privy. The Kid either found a gun concealed for him inside the privy or had somehow procured a weapon by the time the two men returned to the courthouse.56 However he had become armed, once the Kid got to the top of the sixteen stairs leading to the second floor, he turned on Bell and struck him in the head with the heavy handcuffs. When the stunned Bell tried to escape, the Kid fired twice. One of the bullets smashed into the wall and the other struck Bell, who staggered out into the yard and fell dead at the feet of Gottfried Gauss, the old ranch cook who now lived behind the courthouse where he worked as a caretaker.57
Gauss ran screaming for help. The Kid dashed into Garrett’s office and grabbed Olinger’s ten-gauge shotgun. He hopped in his shackles to the room in the northeast corner and threw open a window. Olinger, who had heard the gunshots, ran from the hotel across the road to the courthouse. As Olinger approached the building, the Kid took aim with the shotgun cocked. “Hello, Bob,” the Kid said, firing both barrels just as Olinger looked up at the window.58 Thirty-six buckshot found their mark and the bullying Olinger was dead before his body slammed to the ground.
The Kid did not take flight right away. He had Gauss fetch a pickax, which he used to knock the shackles off one of his legs. Out on the balcony overlooking the road, the Kid addressed the crowd below and explained that he had not meant to kill Bell, or for that matter anyone else, but that he would kill anyone who tried to prevent his escape. He grabbed several weapons and ordered Gauss to bring him a horse. The old man went to the corral and saddled a horse owned by Billy Burt, the deputy court clerk.59
Billy mounted the spirited pony, but it spooked and bucked him off. He ordered one of the prisoners to get the horse back and he remounted. He promised to send back the pony. Some people in Lincoln that evening said that as the Kid rode off, he was singing.60
“Billy the Kid’s defining moment was when, against all odds, he escaped from the Lincoln County jail,” writes author and artist Bob Boze Bell. “That was the event that really catapulted him into history and folklore.”61
The Kid’s escape spawned hundreds of news stories and pulp articles recounting his bloodthirsty exploits and criminal outrages. Although the slain Olinger and Bell brought the Kid’s proven murder count to four, most people believed he had killed at least twenty or more white men and an untold number of Mexicans and Indians. The Las Vegas Daily Optic called him “the daredevil desperado” and a “young demon” whose name “has long been the synonym of all that is malignant and cruel.”62
While the Anglo establishment and power brokers aided and abetted by sensationalist journalists and dime novelists propagated the demonic Billy the Kid, many in the Hispanic community cheered him as their hero. To them he was not a ruthless killer. He was their El Chivato, their little Billy, a champion of the poor and oppressed. He became both the ultimate underdog and a true social bandit, a Robin Hood of the West. He was a freedom fighter out to halt manifest destiny. He was not afraid to tangle with the big cattle ranchers and politicians in Santa Fe who, in their quest for statehood and more power, had to bring El Chivato to justice to show that law and order had come to New Mexico Territory.
His many Hispanic friends did not view him as a ruthless killer but rather as a defender of the people who was forced to kill in self-defense. In the time that the Kid roamed the land he chided Hispanic villagers who were fearful of standing up against the big ranchers who stole their land, water, and way of life. It was said that El Chivato told them:
Oh timid Mexicans don’t be afraid.
Listen to the sound of the bullets,
The bullets of those gringos say:
chee chee cha ree
If you don’t kill me, I shall kill thee63
“He connected with the people, it’s just that simple,” explained James Sanchez, a local citizen, almost 125 years after the Kid died.64 “The people trusted him and invited him into their homes. He was one of us.” Sanchez, born in 1941 into an old Lincoln County family, grew up in a household where stories of El Chivato were told. “He was against the big guys, the outsiders who tried to take our property, our rights, and everything we had. Mostly there was a fear of losing the land. That’s a fear that is still very real today. You have to put your life on the line. People still die protecting their land.”
The Kid appeared to show no fear when, instead of heading for old Mexico after he escaped from the Lincoln County jail, he remained in familiar New Mexico Territory. Pat Garrett was more surprised than anyone that the Kid did not leave. Just a day after he headed west out of Lincoln, the horse he had borrowed for his getaway returned to Lincoln, dragging a rope halter.
The Kid rode over the Capitan Mountains and stayed with several Hispanic friends including Yginio Salazar, one of his oldest compadres in Lincoln County. Salazar and all the others the Kid encountered as he rode tried to convince him to leave the territory. The Kid chose not to leave. He stayed even after Wallace posted another five-hundred-dollar reward for the Kid’s capture before departing to take a new job as U.S. ambassador to Turkey.65
May soon passed into June, and then July, and still the Kid remained on the lam. Pat Garrett heard rumors that the Kid was back in Fort Sumner, but he wrote it off as hearsay. Finally some reliable tips were passed on that the Kid was indeed living in the Fort Sumner area once again, moving between sheepherder camps and spending time in town at the Maxwell house with Paulita or one of his other girlfriends. Garrett and his two best deputies, John W. Poe, a former lawman from Texas, and Thomas “Kip” McKinney, discussed paying a visit to Fort Sumner.66 Even the shocking news of the July 2 shooting of President Garfield did not derail the lawmen.
A week later, as President Garfield fought for his life in far-off Washington, Pat Garrett and his deputies departed Roswell and rode north. They made camp near Fort Sumner on July 13, unaware that newspapers had been reporting sightings of Billy the Kid as far away as Denver and on the Red River between Texas and Indian Territory.67
On July 14, 1881, John Poe was snooping around the plaza in Fort Sumner, but learned nothing about the Kid or his whereabouts. At moonrise Poe rendezvoused with Garrett and McKinney, and they slipped into Fort Sumner to have yet another unsuccessful look for the Kid. Then Garrett had a hunch, perhaps based on gossip from his wife, Apolonaria, that had been passed on by her sister Celsa, one of the Kid’s girlfriends. If the women’s whispers were true, Paulita Maxwell was pregnant with the Kid’s child.68
As historian Frederick Nolan later theorized, the Kid would have been told or maybe guessed about Paulita’s condition during their Christmas meeting after he was captured at Stinking Springs. If true, according to Nolan, “this was the reason the Kid had gone to Sumner, this the reason he was still there.”69
A little after nine o’clock on a warm July evening, the three lawmen made their way on foot to a peach orchard near the Maxwell house. They stayed put for a long time, in hopes that the Kid would show up to pay a visit to Paulita. After a while the trio slowly moved toward the building when they heard voices speaking in Spanish and realized they were not alone in the orchard.
“Soon a man rose from the ground in full view, but too far away to recognize,” Garrett later recalled. “He wore a broad-brimmed hat, a dark vest and pants, and was in his shirt sleeves.”70 The figure jumped over the picket fence and disappeared inside the compound.
It was almost midnight when the lawmen slowly crept out of the orchard and edged their way through the shadows to the white picket fence that encircled the Maxwell house. They entered through the gate and stood on the porch near Pete Maxwell’s bedroom at the southeastern corner of the big adobe. Garrett told the two deputies to wait while he went inside to ask Maxwell if he had seen the Kid. Poe sat on the edge of the steps and McKinney squatted nearby. Garrett entered Maxwell’s room and sat near the head of Pete’s bed.
As Garrett sat on the bed, waiting in Maxwell’s room, the Kid gave in to his hunger pangs. He picked up a butcher knife in Celsa’s kitchen and walked outside to cut some meat from a freshly slaughtered yearling hanging from a beam on Maxwell’s porch. The Kid had taken off his sombrero and boots and as he shuffled down the porch in his stocking feet, the two deputies saw him. Poe later said The Kid was bareheaded and seemed to be buttoning his trousers as he walked. In the dark, Poe thought it was either Maxwell or one of his guests.71
Suddenly the Kid spotted Poe and McKinney and was startled. He pulled the .41-caliber Colt Thunderer from his waistband and covered the deputies, hissing at them, “¿Quién es? [Who is it?]” As he backed toward Maxwell’s door, he repeated, “¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?”
Poe rose to his feet and began walking toward Billy with the idea of keeping him occupied, but the Kid backed into Maxwell’s room. Garrett who had been in the room for a while had just managed to awaken Maxwell and was asking about the Kid when they were interrupted by a voice. “¿Pedro, quiénes son esos hombres afuera? [Pete, who are those men outside?]” At the same time, the Kid must have suddenly realized someone else was in the room. “¿Quién es?” he asked, and then in English, “Who is it?”
Maxwell whispered, “El es [It’s him],” to Garrett.
Garrett yanked out his gun and fired twice. He was ready to fire a third time when he heard a groan and knew his first shots had hit their mark.
Henry McCarty lay dead on the floor. The endless ride of Billy the Kid had just begun.