NOTES

ONE • ONCE UPON A TIME

1. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 3.

2. Robert M. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 1.

3. Nolan, pp. 3–4.

4. Utley, p. 2.

5. Ibid.

6. Philip J. Rasch, with Allan Radbourne, Trailing Billy the Kid (Laramie: National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, Inc., in affiliation with the University of Wyoming, 1995), p. 153. Prior to 1855 and the opening of the Castle Garden center on the southwestern tip of Manhattan Island in Battery Park, passengers, including immigrants, simply got off the ship at whichever wharf they had landed.

7. Terry Golway, The Irish in America (New York: Hyperion, 1997), p. 4.

8. Ibid., p. 21.

9. Source information: Ancestry.com, Irish Immigrants: New York Port Arrival Records, 1846–1851 (database online). Provo, Utah: Ancestry.com, 2001. Original data: Famine Irish Entry Project, 1845–1851. Electronic database from the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

10. Source information: Ancestry.com, 1850 United States Federal Census (database online). Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2004. Original data: 1850 United States Federal Census. M432, 1009 rolls. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

11. Utley, p. 2.

12. Bob Boze Bell, interview by author in Cave Creek, Arizona, November 4, 2004. Bell points out that November 23 became the preferred date because Pat Garrett’s ghostwriter, Marshall Ashmun Upson, chose his own birth date (same day but different year) as the day Billy was born in New York City. Many researchers conclude that November 23 is highly suspect.

13. Source information: Ancestry.com, Irish Immigrants: New York Port Arrival Records, 1846–1851 (database online). Provo, Utah: Ancestry.com, 2001. Original data: Famine Irish Entry Project, 1845–1851. Electronic database from the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

14. Ancestry.com, 1850 United States Federal Census (database online). Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2004. Original data: 1850 United States Federal Census. M432, 1009 rolls. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

15. Rasch, pp. 154, 159, 162.

16. Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927, 1928), p. 158. The term “the modern Gomorrah” was used by the Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage in a sermon delivered in the Brooklyn Tabernacle in the mid-1870s.

17. Ibid., p. 110.

18. Ibid., p. 9.

19. Ibid., pp. 96–97.

20. Alfred Connable and Edward Silberfarb, Tigers of Tammany: Nine Men Who Ran New York (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), p. 139.

21. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, rev. and updated (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), p. 230.

22. Connable and Silberfarb, p. 142.

23. Asbury, p. 154. Some historians have challenged these figures while others contend they are conservative estimates.

24. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, eds., The Reader’s Companion to American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991), p. 1091. Tweed was born and bred in a Fourth Ward tenement.

25. Ibid., p. 171. The Tweed Ring reportedly spent $13 million to construct a courthouse originally estimated to cost $250,000, prompting a prominent reformer to observe that the building’s cornerstone “was conceived in sin, and its dome, if ever finished, will be glazed over with iniquity.”

26. Ibid., p. 238.

27. The sordid nature of life in the New York tenements was exposed by Jacob A. Riis in the 1890 tome How the Other Half Lives, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.

28. Asbury, p. 208.

TWO • ON THE TRAIL

1. Quoted in Stan Steiner, The Waning of the West (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), p. 253. Not to be confused with Frederick Jackson Turner, the noted nineteenth-century historian, Frederick W. Turner is a southwestern author and essayist. His testimonial about the American West appears in Steiner’s book.

2. Frederick Nolan, a careful researcher, points out in the endnotes of his The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998) that within days of the Kid’s death in 1881 several newspapers across the nation reported that he was born in New York. According to Nolan, “It is hardly surprising, then, that so many people ‘knew’ the kid was born in New York….”

3. Nora Henn, interview with author, Lincoln, New Mexico, November 20, 2004. A longtime resident of Lincoln, New Mexico, Nora and her late husband, Walter Henn, a distinguished artist, were charter members of the Lincoln County Historical Society. They were also instrumental in the success of many important Lincoln County historic preservation projects.

4. Philip J. Rasch, with Allan Radbourne, Trailing Billy the Kid (Laramie: National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, Inc., in affiliation with the University of Wyoming, 1995), p. 155.

5. Waldo E. Koop, Billy the Kid: The Trail of a Kansas Legend (Wichita: Kansas City Posse of the Westerners, 1965), p. 9.

6. Ibid., p. 10.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.
Stephen Tatum, Inventing Billy the Kid (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), p. 18.

10. Koop, p. 10.
Private Michael McCarty’s service records.
S. P. Kaler and R. H. Manning, History of Whitley County, Indiana (Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1907), p. 218.

11. Koop, p. 10.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Don Cline, Antrim & Billy (College Station, Texas: Creative Publishing Company, 1990), pp. 14–17.

15. Ibid., p. 19.
Source information: United States National Archives, Civil War Compiled Military Service Records (database online). Provo, Utah: Ancestry.com, 1999.

16. Cline, p. 19.
Source information: Hoosiersoldiers.com.

17. Cline, p. 19.

18. Koop, p. 9.

19. Ibid., p. 8.

20. Ibid., p. 9.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., p. 6.

THREE • WICHITA

1. William G. Cutler, History of the State of Kansas (Chicago: A. T. Andreas’ Western Historical Publishing Co., 1882–1883).

2. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 9. The federal census for Sedgwick County was completed on June 27, 1870.

3. Cutler. This book, originally published by subscription, is available online because of the efforts of Early Kansas Imprint Scanners (EKIS) and Kansas Collection (KanColl) volunteers. Cutler’s text appeared in Voices, KanColl’s Online magazine, vol. 3, no. 1 (Spring 1999).
The Empire House opened in May 1870 on the corner of Third and Lane streets. Other hotels soon followed.

4. Cutler. The murder of John Ross, along with that of an unnamed hired man, occurred in October 1860.

5. John Rossel, “The Chisholm Trail,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 1 (February 1936), pp. 3–14. The trail did not become known as the Chisholm Trail until after its extensive use by cattlemen. Rossel points out that Chisholm laid out a trail not for the cattle trade but for his own private business. However, the cattle trade made it famous.

6. Stan Hoig, Jesse Chisholm: Ambassador of the Plains (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1991), p. 159.

7. Genevieve Yost, “History of Lynchings in Kansas,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 2 (May 1933), pp. 182–219. The thieves were hanged on May 19, 1870.

8. George A. Root, “Ferries in Kansas, Part IX—Arkansas River: Concluded,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 2 (May 1936), pp. 180–90. By 1871 work had begun on a river bridge that became operational in the spring of 1872.

9. Data provided by the Historic Preservation Alliance of Wichita and Sedgwick County and the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. Greiffenstein was mayor of Wichita in 1878 and again from 1880 to 1884. He earned the title Father of Wichita.

10. Cutler. A herd of bison grazing southwest of what became Dodge City, Kansas, in 1871 was estimated to number more than four million.

11. Ibid. Further information about early Wichita schools can be found in a book compiled by Kansas educators and published under the auspices of the Kansas State Historical Society: The Columbian History of Education in Kansas (Topeka: Hamilton Printing Company, 1893), pp. 199–203.

12. Cutler. The first school in Sedgwick County was a subscription school held in the winter of 1869–1870. The first school building was not erected until 1871, when voters passed a five-thousand-dollar bond issue. Neither Henry nor Joseph McCarty is listed among the scholars to attend the first school. More than likely, Catherine McCarty home-schooled her sons.

13. Wichita Weekly Eagle, August 18, 1881.

14. Nolan, pp. 10–11.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Waldo E. Koop, Billy the Kid: The Trail of a Kansas Legend (Wichita: Kansas City Posse of the Westerners, 1965), pp. 7–8.

18. Ibid., pp. 6–7.

19. Ibid.

20. Wichita Tribune, March 15, 1871.

21. Koop, p. 7.

22. Ibid., p. 8.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., pp. 7–8.

25. Ibid.

26. Becky Tanner, “Early Wichita Helped Put ‘Wild’ in the Old West,” Wichita Eagle, June 19, 2004. This article was one of a yearlong series of historical vignettes entitled “To the Stars: The Story of Kansas.” The series marked the 150 years since Kansas became a U.S. territory.

27. Ibid.

FOUR • BROTHERHOOD OF THE GUN

1. W. Eugene Hollon, Frontier Violence: Another Look (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. x.

2. Waldo E. Koop, Billy the Kid: The Trail of a Kansas Legend (Wichita: Kansas City Posse of the Westerners, 1965), p. 12.
Wichita Vidette, October 13, 1870.

3. Ibid.
Sources include Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas, 1861–65, transcribed and published online by the Museum of the Kansas National Guard.

4. Wichita got a new jail, paid for with poll and dog taxes, the following year. The Wichita Tribune of June 22, 1871, noted: “Our saloon keepers sell the drinks, and the next week Marshal Megher will be ready to cell the drinker—in the new calaboose.”

5. Koop, p. 12.

6. Ibid.

7. Volney P. Mooney, History of Butler County (Lawrence, Kan.: Standard Printing Co., 1916), pp. 250–61, transcribed by Carolyn Ward, Columbus, Kansas. The killings in Butler County took place in November 1870.

8. Koop, p. 12.

9. Walnut Valley Times, March 3, 1871. The article was titled “Horrible Affair at Wichita.”

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid. Ledford did not have his own pistols with him when the posse arrived. He was forced to grab two pistols described as “old and rusty” as he ran through the saloon to hide in the privy.

13. Nyle H. Miller and Joseph W. Snell, Why the West Was Wild: A Contemporary Look at the Antics of Some Highly Publicized Kansas Cowtown Personalities (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), p. 45.

14. Ibid., pp. 44–47.

15. Ibid., p. 47. This story was also printed in the Ford County Globe on July 25, 1882. The Dodge City Times published a vigorous defense of Bridges on July 27 and branded as “scurrilous” the Caldwell Commercial editorial by W. B. Hutchison.

16. Koop, pp. 12–13.

17. Hollon, p. 109.

18. Russ A. Pritchard, Jr., Civil War Weapons and Equipment (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2003), pp. 52–54.

19. Geoffrey Ward, with Ric Burns and Ken Burns, The Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. xii. More than three million Americans fought in the war, and 2 percent of the population died.

20. Ibid.

21. Michael Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Soft Skull Press, 2003), p. 429.

22. Ibid., p. 434.

23. Eric T. Dean, Jr., Shook over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 98, 102.

24. Ibid., p. 99.

25. Hollon, pp. 115–16.

26. Garry Wills, A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 243.

27. Ibid., p. 247.

28. Ibid.

29. Bellesiles, p. 437.
Hollon, p. 106.
Joseph G. Rosa, The Gunfighter: Man or Myth? (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), p. 5.

30. Edward W. Wood, Jr., Beyond the Weapons of Our Fathers (Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing, 2002), p. 12.

31. Rosa, p. 5.

32. According to Rosa, the origin of the word “gunfighter” is obscure. Some sources state the term was not commonly used until the late 1890s. The legendary Bat Masterson used the word in articles he wrote in 1908.

FIVE • CONTAGIOUS WAR

1. Dale Keiger, “Why Metaphor Matters,” Johns Hopkins Magazine (February 1998).

2. Waldo E. Koop, Billy the Kid: The Trail of a Kansas Legend (Wichita: Kansas City Posse of the Westerners, 1965), p. 13.

3. Keith Wheeler, The Townsmen (New York: Time-Life Books, 1975), p. 32.

4. Ibid.

5. Old Cowtown Museum, Wichita; Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka; Historic Preservation Alliance of Wichita and Sedgwick County.
E. B. Allen, who started his medical practice in 1870, is considered Wichita’s first physician. He also served two terms as coroner and two terms as mayor.
Andrew Fabrique served with the Union army. In May 1862 he was taken prisoner by Confederates but escaped in less than one hour. Fabrique later received a gunshot wound at the Battle of Shiloh. His medical practice in Wichita ranged from the cattle trail town of Newton to the north to Indian Territory to the south.

6. Ibid.
Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 288.

7. Ibid.
Another excellent source of information about the disease is Katherine Ott, Fevered Lives: Tuberculosis in American Culture since 1870 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).

8. Ibid.

9. Dr. Samuel J. Crumbine, who later wrote Frontier Doctor, which describes his medical experiences during the “wild years” in Dodge City, Kansas, became one of the leading figures in the field of public health in Kansas. Crumbine became alarmed when he saw tuberculosis patients spitting on the floor of a train and drinking from public water glasses. Many years later, when he was secretary of the Kansas State Board of Health, he came up with an ingenious way to curb tuberculosis and other diseases. He banned common drinking vessels and spitting in public places. He also promoted health campaigns with such slogans as “Swat the Fly” and “Bat the Rat.” He even convinced a brick company to imprint “Don’t Spit on the Sidewalk” on every fourth brick manufactured.

10. Koop, p. 13.

11. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 16.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

SIX • PULP FICTION

1. Kent Ladd Steckmesser, The Western Hero in History and Legend (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p. xi.

2. Stephen Tatum, Inventing Billy the Kid (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), pp. 18–19.

3. Colorado Territory was organized by an act of Congress in 1861. Colorado became the thirty-eighth state on August 1, 1876, America’s 100th birthday year, giving it the nickname Centennial State.

4. Edwin S. Hooker, Denver Post, April 1, 1928, p. 15.
Waldo E. Koop, Billy the Kid: The Trail of a Kansas Legend (Wichita: Kansas City Posse of the Westerners, 1965), p. 16.

5. Tatum, pp. 3, 210. Tatum also cites an El Paso Times story from September 16, 1923, in which Coe mentions McCarty’s brief residence in Denver.

6. Koop, p. 9.

7. Historic photographs collection and accompanying material, from Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library; Colorado Historical Society; Denver Art Museum; and Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid. Other sources include www.denvergov.org.

10. Isabella Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), p. 41.
Isabella Bird ascended Long’s Peak in the company of mountain man Jim Nugent, also known as Rocky Mountain Jim. Bird’s book was a critical success when originally published in 1879.

11. Robert Antheam, The Coloradans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976), p. 93.

12. W. H. Buchtel, “A Paradise for Dyspeptics and Consumptives: The Climate of Colorado,” February 1873, Western History Photography Collection of Denver Public Library, Call Number: C362.196995 B854par 1873.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.
A source of additional information about Barnum in Colorado is Uchill Ida Libert, Howdy, Sucker! What P. T. Barnum Did in Colorado (Denver: Pioneer Peddler Press, 2001).

15. Irving Wallace, The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P. T. Barnum (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), pp. 170–71.
In this cited work and in several other books about Barnum, his son-in-law’s surname appears as Buchtel, which this author uses. Barnum family genealogists, however, contend that the physician’s name was spelled Butchell.

16. Ibid., p. 172.

17. Michael Wallis, The Real Wild West: The 101 Ranch and the Making of the American West (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 20.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., p. 21.

20. Ibid.

21. Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “MOODY, ROBERT,” www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/MM/fmo20.html (accessed May 1, 2005). accessed May 1, 2005).
A native of England, Moody first met Barnum in New York in 1857. Barnum hired him to manage the Dipper Ranch in 1871 and Moody later bought an interest in the enterprise that he sold in 1876.

22. Daily Kansas State Record, Topeka, October 26, 1870.

23. Ibid.

24. Wallace, p. 225.

25. Ibid.

26. Wallis, pp. 20–22.
Wallace, p. 106.

27. Ibid., pp. 176–77.

28. William H. Goetzmann and William N. Goetzmann, The West of the Imagination (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1986), pp. 287–88.

29. Wallis, pp. 45–47.

30. Larry McMurtry, “Inventing the West,” New York Review of Books, vol. 47. no. 130 (August 10, 2000).

31. Harper’s Weekly (January 11, 1868), p. 18.

32. Ibid. (September 23, 1871), p. 897.

33. Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, The American West: A New Interpretive History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 478.

34. Ibid.

35. Thomas J. Lyon, “The Literary West,” The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O’Conner, and Martha A. Sandweiss (New York and Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1994).

36. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 127.

SEVEN • SILVER THREADS AMONG THE GOLD

1. From Carol Muske-Dukes, “Howdy, Pardner,” review of Cowboy, by Sara Davidson, in Washington Post, June 14, 1999, Style section.

2. From August 25, 1871, to March 1, 1873, the exact whereabouts of the McCarty-Antrim party are unknown.

3. Michael Wallis and Suzanne Fitzgerald Wallis, Songdog Diary: 66 Stories from the Road (Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 1996), pp. 173–74.
Russian thistle, also called rolling brush, white man’s plant, prickly glasswort, Russian cactus, saltwort, and wind witch, can be found throughout the western United States. Old-time cowboys in the Southwest claimed tumbleweeds were put on earth to show folks the way the wind is blowing.

4. Scott Bidstrup, “A Shameful Legacy: The Shocking Mismanagement of America’s Public Lands,” 2000, 2002, an essay in hypertext, www.bidstrup.com/publiclands.htm.

5. Robert Leonard Reid, America, New Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), p. 18.

6. Philip J. Rasch and R. N. Mullin, “New Light on the Legend of Billy the Kid,” New Mexico Folklore Record, vol. 7 (1952–1953), pp. 1–5.

7. Richard Harris, National Trust Guide Santa Fe (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), pp. 82–84.

8. Rasch and Mullin, p. 4.

9. Ibid.
Both the Book of Marriages of Santa Fe County and First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe’s records misspelled Antrim. The county records listed it as Antrum, the church as Antram.

10. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 17.
Bob Boze Bell, The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid (Phoenix: Tri Star-Boze Publications, 1992, 1996), p. 18.

11. A fonda, or inn, first appeared on La Plaza de Armas in Santa Fe shortly after the Spanish arrived in the early 1600s. Through the centuries several different hotels have stood on this site, making it the oldest hotel corner in the United States. The current hotel, La Fonda, was built in the 1920s. Hotel brochures still boast that Billy the Kid once worked there.

12. Stephen Tatum, Inventing Billy the Kid (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), p. 19.

13. Billy the Kid Historic Preservation Society (BTKHPS), www.billythekidhistoricpreservation.com.
Marcelle Brothers, cofounder of BTKHPS, maintains a carefully researched Web site, www.aboutbillythekid.com.

14. Charles W. Harris, New York, published “Silver Threads Among the Gold” in 1873, with music by Hart Pease Danks and words by Eben Eugene Rexford. The song sold more than three million copies, but Danks, having sold all rights to the song, never profited from the sales.
Henry McCarty’s other favorite tune, “Turkey in the Straw,” was an early American minstrel song and a fiddle tune, titled “Natchez under the Hill,” before it was published with words in 1834 as “Old Zip Coon.” It was a popular song during Andrew Jackson’s presidency. The tune was derived from the ballad “My Grandmother Lived on Yonder Little Green,” derived in turn from the Irish ballad “The Old Rose Tree.” Barbershop Harmonic Society, Kenosha, Wisconsin, Files.

15. Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), pp. 275–76.

16. Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexico (1912; Albuquerque: Horn & Wallace, 1963), vol. 2, p. 157.

17. Ibid., pp. 157–58.

18. Ibid., p. 159.

19. Ibid., p. 160.

20. Michael Wallis, Heaven’s Window: A Journey through Northern New Mexico (Portland, Ore.: Graphic Arts Center Publishing, 2001), p. 25.

21. Twitchell, p. 147.

22. Donald Cline, Alias Billy the Kid: The Man behind the Legend (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1986), p. 26.

23. Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996, 1998), pp. 153–54.

24. Bell, p. 19.

EIGHT • LAND OF LITTLE TIME

1. John DeWitt McKee, “The Unrelenting Land,” in The Spell of New Mexico, ed. Tony Hillerman (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976), p. 71. The essay was reprinted from the New Mexico Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3 (Autumn 1957), by permission of the author.

2. Susan Berry and Sharman Apt Russell, Built to Last: An Architectural History of Silver City, New Mexico (Silver City: Silver City Museum Society, 1995), p. 18.

3. Jerry Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Society, 1993), p. 4.
John Swisshelm, one of the town founders, probably built the Antrim cabin. It was enlarged to include a dining room and rooms for boarders but not until after the Antrims lived there. Later the residence became a shoe store. It was demolished in 1894.

4. Ibid., pp. 4–5.

5. Ibid., p. 6.

6. Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996, 1998), p. 335.
The Spanish cherished their martyred saints as well as such folk heroes as the legendary El Cid, who, like St. Vincent, was associated with the port city of Valencia.

7. From accounts furnished by Oscar Waldo Williams, a frontier lawyer and surveyor, Silver City Museum files. Williams describes Apaches parading single file through Silver City, “marked with a red cotton band tied around each copper-colored forehead to show that they were army scouts.”

8. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers’ Project Collection. Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” Interview of Robert Golden, June 22, 1938, collected by Frances E. Totty.

9. Julyan, p. 335.
Berry and Russell, p. 12.
John Bullard was leading a force of volunteers against the Apaches when he was “shot straight through the heart,” according to an early settler. Historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell later wrote that the early settlers of Silver City never forgave the Apaches for killing Bullard.

10. Ibid., p. 11.

11. Ibid., pp. 11–12.

12. Las Cruces Borderer, March 16, 1871.

13. Berry and Russell, p. 13.

14. Ibid., pp. 13–14.
Silver City Mining Life, May 31, 1873. According to this newspaper story, which promoted the virtues of Silver City, such as a climate “beneficial to invalids,” there were more Anglos than Hispanics living there. “Silver City is a town of about 1,200 inhabitants, romantically situated in the mountains, and populated by about 300 Mexicans and 900 Americans, the very larger part of whom are engaged in mining.”

15. Ibid., January 17, 1874. The editorial under the headline A TRIP TO SANTA FE also stated that in the writer’s opinion there was nothing in Santa Fe that “would cause one to wish it as a permanent residence.”

16. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 21.

17. Silver City Mining Life, March 21, 1874.

18. Winfred Blevins, Dictionary of the American West (New York: Facts on File, 1993), p. 131.

19. Silver City Mining Life, December 27, 1873.
Bob Boze Bell, The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid (Phoenix: Tri Star-Boze Publications, 1992, 1996), p. 19.

20. Bell, p. 19.
Nolan, p. 23.
Bell, p. 19.
Chauncey O. Truesdell, a classmate of Henry Antrim’s in Silver City, was one of several people who said he had no knowledge of Catherine Antrim’s ever taking in boarders.

21. “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” interview of Louis Abraham, 1937.

22. Ibid.

23. Weddle, p. 7.

24. “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” interview of Louis Abraham, 1937.

25. Nolan, p. 29.

26. American Guide Series, Compiled by Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Works Projects Administration, New Mexico: A Guide to the Colorful State (New York: Hastings House, 1940), p. 127.

27. Calvin Horn, New Mexico’s Troubled years: The Story of the Early Territorial Governors (Albuquerque: Horn & Wallace, 1963), pp. 152–53.
Giddings, who had been appointed by President Ulysses Grant, made his remarks about education during his first address to the territorial legislature, December 7, 1871.

28. P. R. Burchard, “Our Educational Outlook,” Scribner’s Monthly, vol. 4, no. 1 (May 1872), p. 98.

29. Richard Melzer, When We Were Young in the West: True Stories of Childhood (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2003), p. 301.

30. Silver City Mining Life, August 9, 1873.
Peter Ott’s lot in life improved when he quit teaching and became the proprietor of the Keystone House, a popular hotel later known as the Tremont House. In October 1874 a disgruntled former employee wielding a navy Colt six-shooter wounded Ott. He survived and became known as the prince of caterers.

31. Silver City Mining Life, January 3, 1874

32. Ibid., February 21, 1874.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., January 17, 1874.

35. Ibid., January 24, 1874.

36. Nora Henn, interview with author, Lincoln, New Mexico, November 20, 2004.

NINE • ONE STEP OVER THE LINE

1. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers’ Project Collection. Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” interview of Louis Abraham, 1937, collected by Frances E. Totty.

2. The contemptuous term “greaser” dates to at least 1836 in Texas. The origin of the word is uncertain, but through the years it came to be a demeaning term just like “bean-eater,” “pepper-eater,” and “never-sweats.” Derisive Anglo cowboys occasionally called New Mexico greaserdom. Hispanics, for their part, used the word “gringo” as their derogatory name for Anglos or someone who did not speak Spanish. The etymology of this word also remains unclear.

3. Jerry Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Society, 1993), p. 8.
As pointed out in the book’s foreword by historian Robert Utley, many gaps in Billy the Kid’s early life were filled in, thanks to Weddle’s tenacious research. Weddle’s detailed description of the young Henry Antrim in Silver City came from a variety of credible sources, published works, interviews, and historical records.

4. Silver City Independent, March 22, 1932.

5. Weddle, p. 8.

6. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 24.

7. Data imaged from National Archives and Records Administration, 1870 Federal Population Census; 1880 Federal Population Census; and Fort Selden State Monument, Radium Springs, New Mexico.
Established thirteen miles north of Las Cruces in 1865, the fort was active for a quarter century. A young Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) called it home in 1884, when his father, Captain Arthur MacArthur, became the post commander. Douglas, the World War II general, spent several years of his childhood at Fort Selden in the company of officers and soldiers including units of African-American troops called buffalo soldiers. The fort was decommissioned in 1891.

8. Nolan, p. 24.
Sometimes the mostly motherless children were referred to as street rats or the dangerous classes, because they formed gangs that fought against law officers.

9. Wichita Weekly Eagle, August 11, 1881.
Editor Marsh Murdock’s reference to Henry as a street gamin did not appear in print until ten years after he made the statement.

10. Weddle, p. 9.

11. Silver City Mining Life, February 7, 1874.

12. Weddle, pp. 12–13.

13. Ibid., p. 13.
As mining flourished in the Silver City area, the watersheds were heavily logged and overgrazed, resulting in an enormous increase in runoff. Main Street became the principal floodway, and the road eroded down to bedrock, well below the original street grade. Main Street became known as the Big Ditch.

14. Ibid., pp. 6–7.

15. Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexico (1912; Albuquerque: Horn & Wallace, 1963), vol. 2, p. 160.

16. Ibid., pp. 160–61.

17. Ibid., p. 162.

18. “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” interview of Louis Abraham, 1937.

19. Weddle, pp. 14–15.

20. Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996, 1998), p. 130.

21. “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” June 16, 1937.

22. Weddle, pp. 14–15.

23. Ibid.

24. Nolan, p. 27.
Author Don Cline, in Antrim & Billy, claims that one Emma Norris succeeded Webster in May 1874. Most other sources, including Nolan, Bob Boze Bell, and Jerry Weddle, maintain that Mrs. Pratt was Henry’s second schoolteacher.

25. Nolan, p. 27.

26. Ibid.

27. Weddle, p. 17.

28. Ibid.

29. January 9, 1952, interview with Chauncey O. Truesdell, Phoenix, Arizona, from Silver City Museum files.

30. Ibid.

31. Silver City Mining Life, September 19, 1874.

32. “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” interview of Louis Abraham, 1937.

33. First verse and refrain, “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” 1873, music by Hart Pease Danks, words by Eben Eugene Rexford.

TEN • GONE ON THE SCOUT

1. Robert Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 9.

2. Geoffrey C. Ward, “Henry the Kid,” American Heritage, vol. 41, no. 3 (April 1990), p. 14.

3. Lou Blachly, “I’ll Never Forget,” Silver City Enterprise, November 3, 1949, quoting from Wayne Whitehill’s memories of Silver City: “Mama made all our clothes. Most all the people, especially the youngsters, wore moccasins just like the Indians.”

4. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 27.

5. Ibid., p. 28. Some authors use Patience as Mary Richards’s middle name, but according to several documents, including federal census records, her name was Mary Phillipa Richards. She was born in Southampton, England, in 1846.

6. Joan Nunn, Fashion in Costume, 1200–2000 (Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, A&C Black Ltd., 2000).
During this period large quantities of false hair were used for braids and curls or worn in a chignon, a knot of hair at the back of the head. Much of the hair was obtained in Catholic countries, from novices entering convents, peasant girls in Europe, or prisoners or paupers in workhouses. By 1876 some fashion influences declared that the use of false hair was passé.

7. Nolan, p. 29.

8. Bob Boze Bell, The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid (Phoenix: Tri Star-Boze Publications, 1992, 1996), p. 24.

9. Nolan, p. 30.

10. Ibid., p. 28.

11. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers’ Project Collection. Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” interview of Augusta Abraham, 1937, collected by Frances E. Totty.

12. Ibid., interview of Dick Clark, 1937.

13. Silver City Enterprise, January 3, 1902.
Whitehill gave this interview after the eastern press once more focused its attention on Billy the Kid, following the appointment of Pat Garrett as collector of customs at the port of El Paso, Texas.

14. Nolan, p. 32.

15. Jerry Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Society, 1993), p. 19.

16. January 9, 1952, interview with Chauncey O. Truesdell, Phoenix, Arizona, from Silver City Museum files.

17. Ibid.
Truesdell was eighty-eight years old at the time of his interview. He was deaf but mentally alert, living with his cat in a comfortable cottage on North 37th Street, where he enjoyed watching his new television. He is considered one of the more credible sources of those who actually knew Henry Antrim before he became Billy the Kid.

18. Silver City Mining Life, November 5, 1874.

19. Nolan, p. 31.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Donald Cline, Alias Billy the Kid: The Man behind the Legend (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1986), p. 31.

24. Pat Garrett, The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, the Noted Desperado of the Southwest, Whose Deeds of Daring and Blood Made His Name a Terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), p. 10.

25. Unpublished manuscript in the files of the New Mexico Writers’ Project, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, interview of Jim Blair, 1937, compiled by Frances E. Totty.

26. Silver City Independent, March 22, 1932. Anthony Connor was interviewed while in Silver City to which he returned to attend the funeral of his sister, Sara Knight, wife of Richard Knight. Ward, p. 14.

27. Silver City Enterprise, January 3, 1902.

28. Weddle, p. 22.

29. Ibid., p. 24.

30. Nolan, p. 33.

31. Silver City Herald, September 5, 1875.
Other news items that day included word of Indians stealing twenty-eight head of horses from a ranch near Augustin Springs and of George Potten’s being attacked and severely bitten by a dog in front of Ward’s Saloon in Silver City. The newspaper noted the dog was a repeat offender and went on to report: “He has ceased to bite—he’s a dead dog now.”

32. Weddle, p. 58.

33. Maurice Kildare, “Saga of the Gallant Sheriff,” The West: True Stories of the Old West, vol. 9, no. 3 (August 1968), p. 53.

34. Weddle, p. 26.

35. Silver City Mining Life, February 14, 1874.
The story about the jail went on to say, “Black Bros., the builders, will receive many an inverted blessing from future inmates, for the thoroughness with which they did their work.”

36. Weddle, pp. 26–27.

37. Silver City Independent, March 22, 1932.

38. Silver City Enterprise, January 3, 1902.

39. Silver City Herald, September 26, 1875.
The translation of “sans cue [queue], sans joss sticks” is “without a braid of hair, without incense.” Joss sticks were slender sticks of incense burned before a Chinese idol or image.

40. “On the scout” meant “on the lam from the law.” “Among the willows” had the same meaning, but it also described a couple making love.

ELEVEN • SADDLE TRAMP

1. Lee Priestley, with Marquita Peterson, Billy the Kid: The Good Side of a Bad Man (Las Cruces, N.M.: Yucca Tree Press, 1993), p. 14.

2. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 34.

3. Will C. Barnes, Arizona Place Names (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), p. 442.
Camp Thomas was established on August 12, 1876, on the south bank of the Gila River, San Carlos Apache Indian reservation, just above Old Camp Goodwin. The camp was moved up the Gila two years later and in 1883 was renamed Fort Thomas.

4. Nolan, p. 34.

5. Ibid.

6. January 9, 1952, interview with Chauncey O. Truesdell, Phoenix, Arizona, from Silver City Museum files.

7. Note: “Hoosegow,” also “hoosgow,” was adapted from the Spanish word juzgado for courthouse or court of justice.

8. Jerry Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Society, 1993), p. 28.

9. Ibid., p. 29.

10. Ibid., p. 30.

11. Ibid.

12. Robert A. Tennert, “A Different Perspective: Victorian Travelers in Arizona, 1860–1900,” Journal of Arizona History, vol. 29, no. 4 (Winter 1988), p. 352.

13. E. Conklin, Picturesque Arizona (New York: Continent Stereoscopic Co., 1878), p. 369.

14. Tennert, p. 353.

15. Barnes, p. 99.

16. Ibid., p. 288.

17. Lowell Parker, Arizona Towns and Tales (Phoenix: Phoenix Newspapers, 1975), p. 55.

18. Joseph F. Park, “The 1903 ‘Mexican Affair’ at Clifton,” Journal of Arizona History, vol. 18 (Summer 1977), pp. 119–48.

19. Weddle, p. 31.

20. Ibid., pp. 30–31.

21. From files and information provided by Round Valley Public Library, the Casa Malpais Museum, Springerville, Arizona.

22. Joseph A. Munk, Arizona Sketches (New York: Grafton Press, 1905).
In 1884 Dr. Munk (1847–1927) came to Arizona Territory, where he and two brothers operated the Munk Cattle Ranch near Wilcox. Prompted by his abiding love of Arizona, Munk amassed an extensive library of books, maps, prints, and other material about what became the forty-eighth state. He donated his collection to the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles in 1908. He also wrote several books.

23. Weddle, p. 31.

24. Ibid., p. 32.

TWELVE • KID ANTRIM

1. Robert N. Mullin, The Boyhood of Billy the Kid. Southwestern Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, Monograph No. 17 (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1967).

2. Vincent dePaul Lupiano and Ken W. Sayers, It Was a Very Good Year: A Cultural History of the United States from 1776 to the Present (Holbrook, Mass.: Bob Adams, 1994), pp. 154–55.
Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 5.

3. Schlereth, p. 5.

4. Ibid., p. 4.

5. Joseph A. Munk, Arizona Sketches (New York: Grafton Press, 1905).

6. John S. Bowman, gen. ed., The World Almanac of the American West (New York: World Almanac, imprint of Pharos Books, 1986), pp. 208–10.

7. Ibid., p. 211.

8. Ibid.

9. Jerry Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Society, 1993), p. 32.

10. Fintan O’Toole, “The Many Stories of Billy the Kid,” New Yorker (December 28, 1998–January 4, 1999), p. 97.

11. Will C. Barnes, Arizona Place Names (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988), p. 188.

12. Marshall Trimble, Arizona: A Cavalcade of History (Tucson: Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2003), pp. 114–15.
Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Center for Desert Archaeology, Tucson, Arizona, “The ‘Camp Grant Massacre’ in the Historical Imagination,” a paper presented April 25–26, 2003, at the Arizona History Convention, Tempe, Arizona.

13. Ibid.
According to Trimble, “No jury in the Arizona Territory would find anyone guilty of killing an Apache.”

14. Fort Grant historical material provided by Arizona Department of Corrections, Phoenix, Arizona.
In 1912 the federal government turned over Fort Grant to the newly created state of Arizona to be used as a state industrial school for wayward boys and girls. In 1968 the school was made part of the state’s Department of Corrections, and in 1973 it became an adult male prison.

15. From biographical information supplied by the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest, Oak Park, Illinois.

16. L. R. Arms, A Short History of the Noncommissioned Officer (El Paso, Tex.: U.S. Army Museum of the Noncommissioned Officer, Fort Bliss, Texas, 1989).

17. John Bourke, On the Border with Crook (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), pp. 12–13.
John Gregory Bourke was first and foremost a soldier. At sixteen he ran away from his comfortable Philadelphia home to enlist in the Union cavalry, and he served with distinction during the Civil War, receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor for his gallantry at Stone River, Tennessee. Mustered out in 1865, he received an appointment to West Point and was commissioned second lieutenant in 1869. He went on to serve with distinction in Indian campaigns in the West. He also was a first-rate anthropologist and historian with a particular interest in Native American culture. He mastered the Apache tongue. He left behind fascinating accounts of military life on the hard frontier before he died from an aneurysm of the aorta in 1896, just two weeks before his fiftieth birthday. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, as was his wife, Mary.

18. Barnes, p. 57.
Some years later, the settlement became known as Bonita (Spanish for “pretty”) after the Sierra Bonita, a name often given the Graham Range. Bonita Creek, a dry wash for most of its course to the Gila River, also was nearby.

19. Ibid.
Barnes was a cowman and a prolific writer, best known for his compendium Arizona Place Names, one of the earliest of such dictionaries.

20. Weddle, p. 33.

21. Herbert M. Hart, Old Forts of the Far West (New York: Bonanza Books, 1965), p. 155.
A sutler was a civilian who traded goods to soldiers on or near a military post. With the approval of the commanding officer, he carried such necessities as knives, tobacco, cloth, buttons, and whiskey.

22. Anne M. Butler, Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, 1865–90 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), p. 8.
The hog ranches described by Bourke were about three miles from Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. His choice of the term “Cyprian,” or a woman of the night, derives from Cyprus, the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

23. Weddle, pp. 33–34.

24. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 49.

25. Ibid.

26. Gertrude Hill, “Henry Clay Hooker: King of the Sierra Bonita,” Arizoniana: The Journal of Arizona History, vol. 2, no. 4 (Winter 1961), pp. 12–13.

27. Ibid.

28. Earle R. Forrest, “The Fabulous Sierra Bonita,” Journal of Arizona History, vol. 6, no. 3 (Autumn 1965), pp. 137–38, 140.

29. Munk, p. 98.

30. Weddle, pp. 34–35.

31. Ibid., p. 35.
A logbook and other material pertaining to William Whelan (1843–1908), noted sheriff and rancher, as well as the reminiscences of his son, William Whelan, Jr. (1872–1975), describing ranch life and family are at the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public records, Phoenix, Arizona.

32. Mullin, p. 14.

33. J. Cabell Brown, Calabazas or Amusing Recollections of an Arizona City (San Francisco: Valleau & Peterson, 1892), pp. 25–26.
The town of Calabazas, from the Spanish for “pumpkin” or “gourd,” was founded and named by the Calabasas Land and Mining Company in 1865. The spelling changed to Calabasas in 1882. Found just north of the Mexican border, the town was a sanctuary for tough hombres from all over the West.

34. Richard Erdoes, Saloons of the Old West (Salt Lake City and Chicago: Howe Brothers, 1985), p. 219.

35. Weddle, p. 32.

36. Nolan, p. 51.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., pp. 51, 306, fn 7.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1849, Mackie was actually named McAckey. According to records, after Mackie and Henry Antrim parted company, he roamed the West until 1894, when he entered an old soldiers’ home in Milwaukee. He died there on July 21, 1920, his seventy-first birthday.

39. Silver City Herald, October 17, 1875.

THIRTEEN • FIRST BLOOD

1. From the transcription of Frank Cahill’s deathbed statement, taken on August 18, 1877, by notary public Miles Wood at the post hospital, Camp Grant, Arizona Territory.

2. Winfred Blevins, Dictionary of the American West (New York: Facts on File, 1993), p. 211.
The precise derivation of the words “lynching” and “lynch law” remains open for debate. Most scholars credit Captain William Lynch (1742–1820), who, with some followers, known as lynch-men, seized a band of ruffians in Pennsylvania in 1780 and promptly lynched them. Almost a century later in the American West, the word “lynchy” came into usage, as in “The mob had a lynchy look.”

3. F. R. Casey, The Western Peace Officer: A Legacy of Law and Order (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), p. 12.

4. Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp: The Life behind the Legend (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), p. 5.
Earp was indicted for horse theft but never stood trial.

5. Jerry Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Society, 1993), p. 35.

6. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 52.

7. Ibid., pp. 52–53.

8. Weddle, p. 36.

9. Ibid.

10. W. A. Haak, Copper Bottom Tales: Historic Sketches from Gila County (Globe, Ariz.: Gila County Historical Society, 1991), p. 10.

11. Weddle, p. 37.

12. Ibid., p. 38.

13. Nolan, p. 54.

14. Grant County Herald, February 24, 1877, Silver City Museum files.

15. Nolan, p. 55.

16. In his book The West of Billy the Kid, Nolan identifies Caleb Martin as a “local rancher.”

17. Weddle, pp. 40–41.

18. Ibid., p. 40.

19. Bob Boze Bell, The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid (Phoenix: Tri Star-Boze Publications, 1992, 1996), p. 36.

20. Weddle, p. 41.

21. From an interview with Wood, Tucson Citizen, December 23, 1901.

22. Weddle, p. 42.
Smith got his colorful nickname because he was known for raising bumper crops of sorghum for cattle feed.

23. Ibid.

24. J. Marvin Hunter, The Trail Drivers of Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), pp. 975–78.
Gildea at one time considered becoming a doctor, but after a year of studying medicine he returned to the cattle trails. “I got lonesome and wanted to hear the wolves howl and the owls hoot back in the West….”

25. Weddle, p. 42.

26. Philip J. Rasch, with Allan Radbourne, Trailing Billy the Kid (Laramie: The National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, Inc., in affilliation with the University of Wyoming, 1995), pp. 184–85. This reference originally appeared in an article entitled “The Story of Windy Cahill,” Real West, vol. 28 (August 1985), pp. 22–27.

27. Weddle, p. 34.

28. Rasch and Radbourne, p. 184.
Francis Cahill enlisted in the Thirty-second Infantry, U.S. Army in New York on July 25, 1868. “He was described as 5´4 3/4" tall, dark hair, blue eyes, dark complexion, aged 22 years, born in Dublin, Ireland, occupation: horseshoer.” On his deathbed, however, Cahill stated that he was born in Galway, Ireland.

29. Weddle, p. 42.

30. Ibid., p. 43.

31. Ibid.

32. Nolan, p. 60.

33. Ibid.
Ainsworth, born in Vermont in 1852, graduated from the University of the City of New York (later New York University) in 1874, the same year he enlisted in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. After serving at frontier posts, he returned to Washington, D.C., and rose through the ranks. He retired from the army in 1912 and died in 1934. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

34. Arizona Weekly Star, August 23, 1877.

35. Rasch and Radbourne, p. 187.

36. Ibid.

37. Robert N. Mullin, The Boyhood of Billy the Kid (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1967), p 16.
The term “equalizer” means a revolver and comes from the expression “A Colt makes all men equal.”

FOURTEEN • AT LARGE

1. Major Charles Compton’s reply to the telegram sent on August 23, 1877, by Pima County Sheriff William Osborn, who read about the shooting in a Tucson newspaper and apparently wired Compton in order to determine jurisdiction.

2. Robert N. Mullin, The Boyhood of Billy the Kid (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1967), p 18.

3. Ibid.

4. Jerry Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Society, 1993), p. 44.

5. Mullin, p. 18.

6. J. Cabell Brown, Calabazas or Amusing Recollections of an Arizona City (San Francisco: Valleau & Peterson, 1892), p. 25.
“Cayuse,” sometimes spelled kiuse, was the term for an Indian pony or a mount that had not been properly trained by white men and was still a bit wild.

7. Richard Maxwell Brown, “Violence,” in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. ClydeA. Milner II, Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss (New York and Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 393.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., p. 394.
The case Brown makes for the rise in murder rates is well taken. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the concept of no duty to retreat, sometimes known as the castle doctrine, has continued to be championed by politicians and by lobbyists for the gun industry and by the National Rifle Association. In 2005, Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed a law that decreed that a person under attack “has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or other bodily harm to himself or herself or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

10. Robert Weisberg, “Values, Violence, and the Second Amendment: American Character, Constitutionalism, and Crime,” Stanford Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 37, Houston Law Review, 2002, http:ssm.com/abstract=311082.

11. Peter Lyon, “The Wild, Wild West,” American Heritage, vol. 11, no. 5 (August 1960), p. 34.

12. Brown, p. 393.

13. Ibid., p. 398.

14. Garry Wills, A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 248–49.

15. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 68.

16. Thomas Edwin Farish, History of Arizona (San Francisco: Filmer Brothers Electrotype Co., 1915), vol. 2, pp. 143–48.
When the surgeon removed Mangus Colorado’s head, it was found to measure larger than Daniel Webster’s; the brain was of corresponding weight.
Following the death of Mangus Colorado, the Apaches elected Cochise as their new chief.

17. Nolan, p. 68.
Some historians question whether Henry ever actually joined the gang of outlaws called the Boys, or simply met some of the gang members. However, such respected Billy the Kid scholars as Frederick Nolan and Jerry Weddle have stated they believe that Henry did ride with the gang for a short time.

FIFTEEN • BANDITTI

1. W. Eugene Hollon, Frontier Violence: Another Look (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 183.

2. Mesilla Valley Independent, July 21, 1877.

3. Maurice Fulton, History of the Lincoln County War (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), pp. 66–67.

4. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 64.

5. Ibid., pp. 64, 66.

6. Robert M. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 14.

7. Ibid., p. 15.

8. Records indicate that when Jesse Evans entered the Rusk Prison in Texas on December 1, 1880, to serve a ten-year term for second-degree murder, he stood five feet five and three-fourths inches and weighed 150 pounds.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers’ Project Collection. Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” interview of Louis Abraham, 1937, collected by Frances E. Totty.

12. Nolan, p. 68.

13. Grant County Independent, October 6, 1877; Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877.

14. Ibid.
Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico, rev. ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), p. 94.
The infamous canyon took its name from Cooke’s Peak, named for Philip St. George Cooke, leader of the Mormon Battalion, which passed through the area in 1846 and 1847. Once part of the Butterfield Overland Mail stage line, the four-mile-long canyon road also was known as the Gauntlet of Death, because by 1862 an estimated four hundred travelers and soldiers had been killed there by Apaches.

15. Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexico (Albuquerque: Horn & Wallace, 1963), vol. 2, pp. 495–96.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), p. 129.

25. Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., October 6, 1877.

28. Ibid.

29. Keleher, p. 52.

30. Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877.

31. Ibid.

32. Utley, pp. 25–26.

33. Maurice Fulton, History of the Lincoln County War (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), p. 51.

34. Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877.

35. Ibid.

SIXTEEN • SEVEN RIVERS

1. Quoted in Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexico History (1912; Albuquerque: Horn and Wallace Publishers, 1963), vol. 2, p. 418.

2. New Mexico in 1877 was also stricken by severe drought, an infestation of grasshoppers, and an epidemic of black pox, the hemorrhagic variety of smallpox that turned the skin black.

3. Ibid.

4. Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “SALT WAR OF SAN ELIZARIO,” www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/SS/jcs1.html.

5. T. C. Bass to Hubbard, October 9, 1877, Records of Richard Hubbard, Texas Office of the Governor, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, Texas.
During the Civil War Colonel Bass commanded the Twentieth Texas Cavalry Regiment. He and his unit saw action in Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Texas.

6. Ibid.

7. William H. Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), pp. 25–26, 186–90.
Called Brunettes, niggers, and Moacs by many white people, the buffalo soldiers were proud of the name given them by Indians.

8. William A. Keleher, Violence In Lincoln County (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press), p. 156.

9. Ibid., p. 158.
Kinney was no doubt aware that his chief nemesis, Albert Fountain, was an original member of the Salt Ring but had since turned against the gang and joined an anti–Salt Ring movement.

10. Ibid.

11. Three scouts serving under Bullis were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor after they rescued him during a skirmish with Comanches in Texas. Bullis went on to a distinguished career, including service in the Spanish-American War. In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt promoted him to the rank of brigadier general, and the following day Bullis retired.

12. Ibid., p. 159.

13. David J. Weber, ed., Foreigners in Their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), p. 208.

14. Robert N. Mullin, The Boyhood of Billy the Kid. Southwestern Studies 5, No. 1 (El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso, 1967), p. 19.
This account of Van Patten’s meeting with the Kid comes from a letter Griggs sent to historian Robert N. Mullin, dated September 4, 1922. Griggs was the son of James Edgar Griggs, whose mining and mercantile interests led him to settle in Mesilla, and Eugenia Ascarte, from one of the most prominent Mexican families in the territory. Van Patten was the nephew of John Butterfield, founder of the famed Butterfield Overland Mail stage line. In 1896, Van Patten, an army veteran, led a posse to investigate the murders of Albert Fountain and his young son in southeastern New Mexico Territory. The bodies were never found. In 1908, Van Patten led another posse to the place where Pat Garrett, the former law officer known for killing Billy the Kid, was shot and killed. No one was ever found guilty for that murder.

15. T. M. Pearce, ed., New Mexico Place Names (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), pp. 153–54.
In the 1880s the town was moved farther north and called Henpeck, for reasons unknown. Still later it was briefly named White City, after a local rancher. By 1900 the old Seven Rivers was essentially a ghost town, and the new settlement assumed the Seven Rivers name.

16. Hal K. Rothman, Promise Beheld and the Limits of Place: A Historic Resource Study of Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks and the Surrounding Areas (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998), p. 100.

17. T. Dudley Cramer, The Pecos Ranchers in the Lincoln County War (Oakland, Calif.: Branding Iron Press, 1996), p. 50.

18. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 71.

19. Cramer, p. 19.
Refugia Rascón y Piño was the daughter of José María Rascón, a native of Andalusia, Spain, who became a sheep rancher in northern New Mexico. Beckwith and Refugia wed in Santa Fe on December 22, 1849.

20. Ibid., p. 23.

21. Ibid., p. 92.

22. Nolan, p. 77.

23. Eve Ball (1887–1976) taught at all levels of education, including college, and also authored several award-winning books. She served as president of the New Mexico Folklore Society and in 1982 was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. At the time of her death she was honored by the U.S. Senate for her life’s work.

24. Eve Ball, Ma’am Jones of the Pecos (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1969), pp. 116–17.

25. Ibid., p. 117.

26. Ibid., p. 118.

27. Robert M. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 217, fn 19.

28. Frederick Nolan, Bad Blood: The Life and Times of the Horrell Brothers (Stillwater, Okla.: Barbed Wire Press, 1994), p. 164.

29. Maurice G. Fulton, History of the Lincoln County War (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), p. 27.

30. Ibid., pp. 27–28.

31. Ibid., p. 28.
In Lincoln County the bungled execution was commonly called the double hanging. Many suspected that it had actually been a clever ruse, plotted by the Murphy-Dolan faction, that went wrong. They contended the plan to fake Wilson’s death and then spirit him away backfired because an onlooker saw his body move in the coffin and alerted the others that he was still alive and needed to be hanged yet again.

32. Santa Fe New Mexican, December 15, 1875.

33. Lily Klasner, My Girlhood among Outlaws (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972), p. 169.

34. Ibid., p. 174.

35. Utley, p. 28.

36. Klasner, p. 170.

37. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 83.

38. Ibid.

39. Cramer, p. 91.

40. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 84.

41. Utley, p. 31.

42. Klasner, p. 174.
Although widely attributed to Oliver Goldsmith, the line was derived from the original version by the Athenian orator and statesman Demosthenes, who in 338 B.C. said, “The man who runs away may fight again.”

SEVENTEEN • BILLY BONNEY

1. Jerry Weddle, Antrim Is My Stepfather’s Name (Phoenix: Arizona Historical Society, 1993), p. 47.

2. A search for the Bonney name on several of the more popular online genealogy databases, such as RootsWeb.com and Ancestry.com, provides many references to William H. Bonney, also known as Billy the Kid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.
Frank Richard Prassel, The Great American Outlaw: A Legacy of Fact and Fiction (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), pp. 220–21.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., pp. 81–82.

7. Ibid.

8. From Frederick Nolan e-mail to the author, February 13, 2005.

9. Ellen Bradbury-Reid, executive director, Recursos de Santa Fe, interview with author, September 26, 2005.
Recursos de Santa Fe, an educational, nonprofit organization specializing in symposiums and tours, was one of the Billy the Kid conference sponsors. Ms. Reid attended all the activities in both Ruidoso and Lincoln.

10. El Paso Times, September 14, 1991.

11. Bradbury-Reid interview.

12. Lincoln County News, October 10, 1991.

13. El Paso Times, September 14, 1991.

14. Ibid.

15. Jan Girand, ed., Roswell Web Magazine, www.roswellwebmag.com/main.htm, Roswell, New Mexico, April 21, 2004.
Ms. Girand is a long-active member of the Billy the Kid Outlaw Gang, Inc., a nonprofit organization the purpose of which is to preserve, protect, and promote Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett history. In September 2004 she was appointed editor of the B.T.K.O.G. Gazette, the organization’s publication for members.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. El Paso Times, September 14, 1991.

23. Ibid.

24. Nolan correspondence, February 13, 2005.

25. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 6.

EIGHTEEN • EYE OF THE STORM

1. William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County 1869–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), p. xii.

2. T. M. Pearce, ed., New Mexico Place Names (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), p. 88.

3. Maurice G. Fulton, History of the Lincoln County War (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968).
Today Lincoln County is less than one-fifth of its original size, and either all or parts of six other counties have been created within its original borders.

4. Keleher, pp. viii–ix.
Warren A. Beck, New Mexico: A History of Four Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), pp. 6–8.
Randolph B. Campbell, Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State (New York and Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 33.

5. The term “mescalero,” or mescal maker, was used by the Spanish to refer to one of the largest Apache groups in New Mexico because of the tribe’s extensive use of the mescal plant.

6. Pearce, p. 88.

7. Ibid., p. 96.

8. Walter R. Henn, A Stroll thru Old Lincolntown (Lincoln, N.M.: Lincoln County Historical Publications, 1996), p. 30.
El Torreón was restored in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration under the sponsorship of the Chaves County Historical Society and deeded to the state of New Mexico.

9. Pearce, p. 88.

10. John P. Ryan, Fort Stanton and Its Community 1855–1896 (Las Cruces, N.M.: Yucca Tree Press, 1998), p. 6.

11. Fulton, p. 14.
Lee Myers, Fort Stanton, New Mexico: The Military Years 1855–1896 (Lincoln, N.M.: Lincoln County Historical Society Publications, 1988), pp. 1–2.
At the time of his death Captain Stanton was a newlywed whose bride had arrived in New Mexico Territory just a month before he rode into the ambush. Only Stanton’s bones were recovered and along with the remains of two other slain soldiers returned to the post for burial with full military honors.

12. Myers, pp. 38–41.

13. Ryan, pp. 41–43.

14. Jim Broeck, El Defensor Chieftain, Internet ed., Socorro, New Mexico, July 16, 2005.
In August 1862 alone, Apaches killed forty-six settlers, kidnapped scores of children, and stole thousands of head of cattle.

15. Neal W. Ackerly, Ph.D., “A Navajo Diaspora: The Long Walk to Hwéedi,” Dos Rios Consultants, Silver City, New Mexico, 1998. Dos Rios Consultants provides consulting services in the social and natural sciences across the greater Southwest.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Broeck, El Defensor Chieftain.

19. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Arizona and New Mexico, 1530–1888 (San Francisco: History Company, 1889), p. 661.
Bancroft collected and published thirty-nine volumes on the history and peoples of western North America. Bancroft wrote very little himself. Some of his many assistants did the actual writing although they were never properly credited.

20. Pearce, pp. 19–20.

21. Records, files, and documentation provided by Scott Smith, manager, Fort Sumner State Monument, New Mexico State Monuments, Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. David Roberts, A Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Frémont, and the Claiming of the American West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), pp. 273–76.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., p. 281.
Bancroft, p. 731. Bancroft wrote that “the Bosque Redondo as a reservation had no merits whatsoever; and as a means of civilizing the Indians, the project proved a total failure.”

28. Roberts, p. 277.
On November 3, 1865, every Mescalero Apache fit to travel left the confines of Bosque Redondo. Shortly afterward even the sick and injured Apaches were able to flee and return to their native home.

29. Dale F. Giese, Forts of New Mexico (Silver City, N.M.: Privately printed, 1991), p. 28.

30. Ryan, p. 26.

31. Ibid., pp. 25–26.

32. Ibid., pp. 23–24.

33. Dan Scurlock, From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin (Fort Collins, Colo.: Rocky Mountain Research Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture, May 1998), pp. 165–67.
In the 1870s army horses usually received a daily ration of fourteen pounds of hay and twelve pounds of grain.

34. Ryan, p. 24.

35. Fulton, p. 14.

NINETEEN • DREAM KILLERS

1. John Tunstall, from an April 1877 letter to his father, John Partridge Tunstall, in London.

2. Paul Kooistra, Criminals as Heroes: Structure, Power & Identity (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989), p. 75.

3. John P. Wilson, Merchants, Guns, and Money: The Story of Lincoln County and Its Wars (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987), p. 41.

4. Warren A. Beck, New Mexico: A History of Four Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), p. 162.

5. Interview with Jack Rigney, former monument manager, Lincoln State Monument, Museum of New Mexico, Lincoln, New Mexico, November 20, 2004.
Rigney served as the Lincoln Monument manager for seventeen years. Previously he managed the Fort Sumner State Monument for eight years.

6. Richard Erodes, Saloons of the Old West (Salt Lake City and Chicago: Howe Brothers, 1985), pp. 84–85.

7. Ibid.
Prior to the advent of commercially bottled distillates, the various whiskeys served in cantinas and saloons were given colorful names, including Apache Tears, Tongue Oil, Tarantula Juice, Nockum Stiff, Red Dog, Stagger Soup, Popskull, Phlegm Cutter, and White Mare’s Milk, described as “the fightingest liquor ever to come out of a bottle.”

8. William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County 1869–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), p. 15.

9. Erodes, p. 84.
Peter Watts, A Dictionary of the Old West (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1877), p. 162. Although “heeled” meant to be armed with a gun, it was also said that a man’s heels were armed when they were spurred. The usage probably derived from the practice of arming the heels of fighting roosters with metal spurs.

10. Lily Klasner, My Girlhood among Outlaws (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972), p. 216.

11. Winfred Blevins, Dictionary of the American West (New York: Facts on File, 1993), p. 291.
“Roostered” was one of many frontier words for drunkenness. Other expressions included “bottle fever,” “cuts his wolf loose,” or “ties on a bear.” In New Mexico, and throughout the Southwest, a drunk was often called by the Spanish word borracho. A great drunkard was a borrachón.

12. Klasner, p. 100.
In her description of the Horrell War, Lily Casey Klasner admits that some of the Horrells’ followers were “very desperate men,” but she also offers a defense for the family’s violent acts: “It is true that several in the Horrell crowd were wanted for killings back in Texas, but those were killings that were more generally approved of than condemned under the code of the time.”

13. Ibid., p. 102.

14. Keleher, p. 13.

15. Wilson, p. 44.

16. Philip J. Rasch, Warriors of Lincoln County (Laramie, Wyo.: National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, in affiliation with the University of Wyoming, 1998), p. 120.

17. Santa Fe New Mexican, January 2, 1874, and January 27, 1874.
“Guerrilla” means a “little war” in Spanish. The word first became popular when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain in 1808 and was bested by small bands of Spanish peasants fighting in unconventional ways.

18. Frederick Nolan, Bad Blood: The Life and Times of the Horrell Brothers (Stillwater, Okla.: Barbed Wire Press, 1994), p. 90.

19. Rigney interview.

20. Klasner, p. 161.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., p. 162.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Dan Scurlock, From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin (Fort Collins, Colo.: Rocky Mountain Research Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture, May 1998), pp. 167–68.

26. William A. Keleher, The Fabulous Frontier (Santa Fe: Rydal Press, 1945), p. 52.

27. Klasner, p. 162.

28. Ibid.

29. Maurice G. Fulton, History of the Lincoln County War (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), p. 95.

30. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County 1869–1881, p. 250.

31. Ibid., pp. 249–50. Patrón made his remarks about Murphy in a sworn affidavit dated July 1, 1878.

32. Ibid., p. 51.

33. Philip J. Rasch, Gunsmoke in Lincoln County (Laramie, Wyo.: National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, Inc., in affiliation with the University of Wyoming, 1997), p. 4.

34. Ibid.

35. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, p. 32.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Wilson, p. 30.
In 1868 L. G. Murphy & Co. was awarded a $9,390 contract to furnish lumber for rebuilding Fort Stanton.

39. Rasch, Gunsmoke in Lincoln County, p. 6.

40. Ibid., p. 9.
John Ryan, Fort Stanton and Its Community, 1855–1896 (Las Cruces, N.M.: Yucca Tree Press, 1998), p. 84.

41. Ibid.

42. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, p. 33.

43. Rasch, Gunsmoke in Lincoln County, p. 13.

44. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, pp. 53–54.
In 1863 Dolan enlisted in Company K, Seventeenth Regiment, New York Zouaves. He was discharged in 1865.

45. Fulton, p. 47.

46. Bob Boze Bell, The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid (Phoenix: Tri Star-Boze Publications, 1992), p. 16.

47. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), pp. 41–42.
Dolan stood only five feet two and one-half inches in his stocking feet.

48. Klasner, pp. 94–95.

49. Rasch, Gunsmoke in Lincoln County, p. 7.

50. Ibid., p. 8.

51. Wilson, p. 30.

52. Fulton, p. 48.

53. Ibid.

54. Klasner, p. 95.

55. William J. Parish, The Charles Ilfeld Company: A Study of the Rise and Decline of Mercantile Capitalism in New Mexico (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 44.

56. Klasner, pp. 95–96.

57. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 43.

58. Klasner, p. 95.

59. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 41.

60. Robert M. Utley, High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), p. 16.

61. George W. Coe, Frontier Fighter (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1984), p. 34.

62. Ibid.

63. Fulton, p. 48. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 41.

64. Coe, p. 30.
When the Civil War ended, at least 345 veterans of the California Column elected to remain in New Mexico Territory.

65. Robert M. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 25.
Frank Coe gave an interview to historian J. Evetts Haley at San Patricio, New Mexico, on August 14, 1927. Coe died in 1931, a couple of weeks shy of turning eighty years old.

66. Mesilla News, September 18, 1875; Grant County Herald, September 26, 1875.

67. Nolan, Bad Blood, pp. 173–74.

68. Ibid.

69. Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877.

70. Ibid.

71. Utley, High Noon in Lincoln, p. 29.

72. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 118.

73. Ibid.
Brady’s wife was pregnant with her ninth child when Brady was shot and killed in Lincoln on April 1, 1878.

74. Utley, Billy the Kid, p. 61.

75. Ibid., p. 62.

76. Ibid., pp. 61–62.

77. Rasch, Gunsmoke in Lincoln County, p. 83.

78. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, pp. 38, 46.

79. Ibid., p. 38.

80. T. Dudley Cramer, The Pecos Ranchers in the Lincoln County War (Oakland, Calif.: Branding Iron Press, 1996), p. 87.

81. Wilson, p. 58.
McSween and Chisum were arrested and jailed at Las Vegas on December 27, 1877. McSween quickly posted bond, but Chisum was held in other unrelated lawsuits and remained jailed until March 1878.

82. Wilson, p. 63.

83. Frederick W. Nolan, The Life & Death of John Henry Tunstall (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), p. 213.

TWENTY • THE UNFORTUNATE WAR SPAWNS THE MYTH

1. Robert M. Utley, High Noon in Lincoln: Violence of the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), p. 165.

2. Robert N. Mullin, The Boyhood of Billy the Kid (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1967), p. 20.

3. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), pp. 87–88.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., p. 92.
Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), pp. 148–49.
Glencoe, a Lincoln County settlement in the Ruidoso Valley, combines a synonym for “valley” with the Coe family surname. The Coes were among the early pioneers of Lincoln and Otero counties. They came from Missouri, worked along the Santa Fe Trail, and moved into southern New Mexico Territory in the mid–1870s.

6. Miguel Antonio Otero, Jr., The Real Billy the Kid: With New Light on the Lincoln County War (Houston: Arte Público Press, 1998), p. 110.
Otero’s two-hundred-page book was first published in 1936 by Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Inc., New York.

7. Ibid.

8. Otero, p. 133.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., p. xvi.

11. Frederick Nolan e-mail to the author, February 13, 2005.

12. Otero, pp. xi. Rivera acted as editor and wrote the critical introduction for the 1998 reissue of Otero’s book.

13. Ibid., p. xiii.

14. Ibid., p. 45.

15. William A. Keleher, The Fabulous Frontier (Santa Fe: Rydal Press, 1945), p. 97.

16. Victor Westphall, Thomas Benton Catron and His Era (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973), p. 6.
Like Steve Elkins’s father, Catron’s father so admired Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, the “grand old man” of the Democratic Party, that he also named his son Thomas Benton in his honor.

17. Ibid.
Catron and Elkins were in a class of nine students who graduated from the law school on July 4, 1860.

18. Ibid., p. 8.
Catron taught at a country school near his father’s farm outside Lexington. Elkins was a teacher in Harrisonville, where it was said he became acquainted with Cole Younger and Jesse James before they launched their notorious outlaw careers.

19. Ibid., p. 11.

20. Ibid., p. 22.

21. Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexico (1912; Albuquerque: Horn & Wallace, 1963), vol. 2, pp. 519–20.

22. Ibid., pp. 401–02.

23. Ibid., p. 520.

24. Howard Roberts Lamar, The Far Southwest 1846–1912: A Territorial History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 147.

25. Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “NEWMAN, SIMEON HARRISON,” www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/NN/fne41.html.

26. Ibid.
Newman moved to Texas, renamed the newspaper The Lone Star, and continued his fight against lawbreakers and political scalawags. The newspaper went out of business in 1886, when Newman lost the support of business leaders who were involved in the vice he was exposing. He spent the rest of his life working for an insurance firm and for the betterment of his adopted city. He died in El Paso in 1915.

27. Westphall, p. 99.
Westphall contends that Catron’s personal role in the Maxwell Land Grant controversy was minor, yet he points out that litigation over the land grant brought the Santa Fe Ring into notoriety and established Catron as the ringleader.

28. Ibid., p. 100.

29. Lamar, p. 153.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Richard Maxwell Brown, “Violence,” The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss (New York and Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 404.
Known to be violent when drinking, the clubfooted Allison served in the Confederate army, joined the Ku Klux Klan, and was responsible for many deaths in knife or gun duels. Unlike many shootists, Allison did not die at age forty-seven dangling from a hangman’s noose or in a gunfight. On July 3, 1887, he fell from a freight wagon he was driving and one of the wheels rolled over his head.

33. Lamar, pp. 149–50.

34. Ibid., p. 147.

35. Ralph Dunlap, Masons in Early Lincoln County prior to 1900 (Lincoln, N.M.: Lincoln Masonic Foundation, 1994), p. 5.

36. History files, Masonic Grand Lodge of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Carson died in 1868 in Colorado. The following year his remains and those of his wife were removed to Taos, New Mexico, and laid to rest in the Kit Carson Cemetery. Although rarely displayed, Carson’s rifle is in the possession of the Montezuma Lodge in Santa Fe, and a Masonic apron bearing his name may be viewed in the collection at the Grand Lodge Building in Albuquerque.

37. Chris Wilson, The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), p. 185.

38. Matt S. Hughes, Grand Orator, “A Triad of Masonic Ideals,” delivered 1914, California Grand Oration, Grand Lodge, F & A. M. of California

39. Dunlap, pp. 5–7.

40. Philip J. Rasch, Gunsmoke in Lincoln County (Laramie: National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, Inc., in affiliation with the University of Wyoming, 1997), p. 11.

41. Gwendolyn Rogers, interview by author in Lincoln, New Mexico, November 19, 2004.

42. Rasch, p. 60.

TWENTY-ONE • ENDLESS WAR

1. Godfrey Gauss letter to J. P. Tunstall, dated April 19, 1882.

2. Lincoln declared the first national Thanksgiving for Thursday, November 26, 1863, in recognition of a long-standing New England tradition. The holiday date was changed from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday every November by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 with the approval of Congress in 1941.

3. George W. Coe, Frontier Fighter (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1984), p. 49–50.

4. Philip J. Rasch, with Allan Radbourne, Trailing Billy the Kid (Laramie: National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, Inc., in affiliation with the University of Wyoming, 1995), pp. 89–90.

5. Ibid., pp. 90–91.

6. Coe, p. 50.

7. Robert M. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 35.
Although in Spanish gallina means “chicken,” in this instance it also means “turkey hen,” as in gallina de la tierra, or “wild turkey.”

8. T. M. Pearce, New Mexico Place Names (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), pp. 149–50.

9. Robert M. Utley, Four Fighters of Lincoln County (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), p. 23.

10. Ibid., p. 33.
The Kid was also known to carry and use the .38-caliber Colt revolver called the Lightning.

11. Robert M. Utley, High Noon in Lincoln County: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), p. 43.

12. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers’ Project Collection. Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, “WPA Life Histories from New Mexico,” interview of Francisco Gomez, August 15, 1938, collected by Edith L. Crawford.

13. Frederick W. Nolan, The Life & Death of John Henry Tunstall (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), pp. 182, 205, 238.

14. William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County 1869–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), p. 252.
According to the Lincoln County Historical Society, Gottfried Georg (Godfrey) Gauss was born in Germany in 1824 and died possibly in Kansas in 1902.

15. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 92.

16. Keleher, p. 325.

17. Ibid., pp. 133–34.

18. Utley, Billy the Kid, p. 39.

19. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 95.

20. Utley, Four Fighters of Lincoln County, p. 23.

21. Jack Rigney, interview by author in Lincoln, New Mexico, November 16, 2004.

22. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 103.

23. Nolan, The Life and Death of John Tunstall, p. 272.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid., p. 273.

27. Ibid., p. 272.

28. Ibid., p. 274.

29. Paul Kooistra, Criminals as Heroes: Structure, Power & Identity (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989), p. 82.

30. Utley, High Noon in Lincoln County, pp. ix–x.

31. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 108.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., pp. 108–09.

35. Utley, Billy the Kid, p. 53.

36. Bob Boze Bell, The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid (Phoenix: Tri Star-Boze Publications, 1992, 1996), p. 56.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., p. 65.

39. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 111.

40. Utley, Billy the Kid, pp. 54–55.

41. Bell, pp. 56–58.

42. Ibid., p. 58.

43. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 115.

44. Bell, p. 58.

45. Utley, Billy the Kid, p. 63.

46. Bell, pp. 60–63.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid., p. 65.

51. Ibid.

52. Coe, p. 94.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid., pp. 97–98.

55. Bell, p. 67.

56. Ibid.

57. Emerson Hough, The Story of the Outlaw (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1905), p. 290.
Johnny Patten, a sawyer and carpenter at Blazer’s Mill, told Hough that he built the large coffin that held the bodies of both Brewer and Roberts. According to Emil Blazer, Dr. Blazer’s son, the two men were buried in separate coffins but side by side.

58. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, pp. 134–36.

59. Keleher, pp. 119–20.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid., p. 122.

62. T. Dudley Cramer, The Pecos Ranchers in the Lincoln County War (Oakland, Calif.: Branding Iron Press, 1996), pp. 116–17.

63. Utley, Billy the Kid, p. 78.
The McSweens had not only a piano but also an organ and a set of bagpipes.

64. Cramer, p. 117.

65. Ibid., p. 118.

66. Ibid.

67. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 139.

68. Utley, Billy the Kid, p. 79.

69. Ibid.

70. Cramer, p. 119.

71. Ibid., pp. 119–20.

TWENTY-TWO • FIRESTORM

1. Frederick W. Nolan, The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), p. 366.

2. John P. Wilson, Merchants, Guns, and Money: The Story of Lincoln County and Its Wars (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987), pp. 90–91.

3. T. Dudley Cramer, The Pecos Ranchers in the Lincoln County War (Oakland, Calif.: Branding Iron Press, 1996), p. 120.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Maurice C. Fulton, History of the Lincoln County War (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), p. 236.

8. Ibid., p. 237.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Wilson, p. 92.

12. Fulton, p. 236.

13. Howard Roberts Lamar, The Far Southwest 1846–1912: A Territorial History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 159.

14. Robert M. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 83.

15. Wilson, p. 93.

16. Utley, p. 89.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., p. 90.

19. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 151.

20. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 151.

21. Cramer, p. 129.

22. Ibid.

23. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, pp. 158–59.

24. Cramer, pp. 130–31.

25. Ibid., p. 131.

26. Ibid., p. 132.

27. Ibid.

28. George W. Coe, Frontier Fighter (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1984), p. 165.

29. Fulton, p. 267.

30. Ibid., pp. 267–68.

31. Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid, p. 162.

32. Ibid., p. 163.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., p. 164.

35. Cramer, pp. 133–34.

36. Ibid., p. 134.

37. Fulton, pp. 273–74.

38. Nolan, The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall, pp. 378–79.

TWENTY-THREE • DEVIL OR ANGEL

1. Kent Steckmesser, The Western Hero in History and Legend (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p. 70.

2. Philip J. Rasch and R. N. Mullin, “Dim Trails: The Pursuit of the McCarty Family,” New Mexico Folklore Record, vol. 8 (1953–54), p. 11.

3. Actor Carleton Young in his role as newspaper editor Maxwell Scott delivers the memorable line to Jimmy Stewart playing Ransom Stoddard. Ironically, director John Ford was himself famous for embellishing reality in many of his films about the Old West.

4. Fintan O’Toole, “The Many Stories of Billy the Kid,” The New Yorker (December 28, 1998–January 4, 1999), p. 97.

5. Las Vegas Gazette, December 3, 1880.

6. Bob Boze Bell, The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid (Phoenix: Tri Star-Boze Publications, 1992, 1996), p. 79.

7. Robert W. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 105. Sallie Chisum married twice; both marriages ended in divorce. She became a successful rancher in her own right and died in 1934 in Roswell, New Mexico.

8. Ibid., pp. 105–06.

9. Robert Julyan, The Place Names of New Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), p. 278. There is also a story that the town’s name came from the Luna family, which settled near the gap, and actually refers to Lunas Gap.

10. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), pp. 170–71.

11. George W. Coe, Frontier Fighter (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1984), pp. 200–03.

12. Nolan, p. 171.

13. Ibid., p. 174.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., p. 26.

16. Pauline Durrett Robinson and R. L. Robertson, Tascosa: Historic Site in the Texas Panhandle (Amarillo: Paramount Publishing Company, n.d.), pp. 7–8, 26.

17. Bill Russell and Delbert Trew, Twice Told Tales of the Llano Estacado (Lubbock, Tex.: Hurricane Printing, 2003), p. 181.
Cowboys, or “brush poppers,” out on the llano had their own language. A hat was “a lid, a warbonnet, or a hair case” beans were “Pecos strawberries” sourdough biscuits were “wading” flour gravy was “Texas butter” onions were “skunk eggs” and the common name for a phosphorus match was “lucifer.”

18. Robinson and Robertson, pp. 29–30.

19. Dr. Henry F. Hoyt’s A Frontier Doctor, published in 1929, was edited by Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., and reprinted in 1979 by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co.

20. F. Hoyt, p. 39.
Hoyt went on to achieve fame as the chief surgeon of the U.S. Volunteers in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. He participated in twenty-five battles, was wounded, and received the Silver Star for gallantry. Following a long and illustrious career, Hoyt died on January 30, 1930, shortly after the publication of A Frontier Doctor.

21. Ibid., p. 147.

22. Ibid., pp. 148–49.

23. Robinson and Robertson, p. 13.

24. Hoyt, pp. 150–53.

25. Ibid., p. 153.

26. Ibid., pp. 153–54.

27. Ibid., pp. 154–56.
The bill of sale the Kid wrote out for Hoyt was dated October 24, 1878. The document, bearing the signature of W. H. Bonney is in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas.

28. Ibid., p. 154.

29. Nolan, p. 92. Utley, p. 244, n 19.

30. Nolan, p. 180.
After being driven out of New Mexico, Selman resumed his life of crime in Texas until he was forced to hide in Mexico. When charges against him were dropped, he moved to El Paso, where he worked as a gambler and city constable. In 1894 he shot and killed a former Texas Ranger during a brothel brawl. On August 19, 1895, Selman killed the infamous shootist John Wesley Hardin as he rolled dice in the Acme Saloon. The following year Selman was killed in a gun duel with a law officer outside the Wigwam Saloon.

31. Utley, p. 112.

32. Paul Kooistra, Criminals as Heroes: Structure, Power & Identity (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989), pp. 88–89.

33. Nolan, p. 180.

34. Utley, p. 112.

35. Ibid.

36. Nolan, p. 185.

37. Bell, p. 91.

38. Ibid., pp. 91–92.

39. Utley, p. 115.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid., pp. 115–16.

42. Bell, p. 96.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., p. 98.

45. Ibid.

46. William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County 1869–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), pp. 214–15.

47. Ibid., pp. 215–16.

48. Ibid., pp. 222–24.

49. Utley, p. 121.

50. Nolan, p. 90.
On December 15, 1867, Rynerson shot and killed Chief Justice John P. Slough during a dispute at the Exchange Hotel in Santa Fe. Rynerson, represented by Smooth Steve Elkins, was acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

51. Ibid., p. 200.

52. Ibid., p. 201.

53. Ibid.

54. Howard Bryan, Wildest of the Wild West: True Tales of a Frontier Town on the Santa Fe Trail (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 1988), p. xii.

55. Ibid., pp. 98–99.

56. Ibid., p. 101.

57. Hoyt, pp. 183–84.

58. Ibid., pp. 481–86.

59. Kooistra, pp. 91–92.

60. Walter Noble Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1926), p. 185.

61. Utley, p. 127.

TWENTY-FOUR • EL CHIVATO

1. Oscar Wilde letter dated April 19, 1882. The Irish poet and playwright wrote this letter nine months after the death of Billy the Kid and just sixteen days after Jesse James was shot and killed. It was written in Leavenworth, Kansas, during Wilde’s one-year lecture tour of America.

2. Robert Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 131.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., p. 132.

5. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 230.

6. Leon G. Metz, Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), pp. 17, 39–40.

7. Ibid., p. 40.

8. Nolan, p. 230.

9. Metz, p. 53.

10. Bob Boze Bell, The Illustrated Life and Times of Billy the Kid (Phoenix: Tri Star-Boze Publications, 1992, 1996), p. 118.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., pp. 118–19.

13. Ibid.

14. Nolan, pp. 228–29.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., p. 229.

17. Bell, p. 122.

18. Ibid., p. 126.

19. Las Vegas Gazette, December 3, 1880.

20. Bell, pp. 130–31.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., p. 122.

23. Ibid., p. 133.

24. Ibid., p. 134.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid., p. 135.

27. T. Dudley Cramer, The Pecos Ranchers in the Lincoln County War (Oakland, Calif.: Branding Iron Press, 1996), p. 165.

28. Bell, p. 137.

29. Ibid., pp. 138–39.

30. Cramer, p. 166.

31. Nolan, p. 248.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. Bell, pp. 140–41.
Bob Boze Bell created a portrait of the Kid and Paulita’s embrace. Titled Under the Mistletoe, the painting is now in the author’s collection.

35. Ibid., p. 141.

36. Ibid., p. 143.

37. William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County 1869–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), p. 282.

38. Utley, p. 166.

39. Santa Fe New Mexican, December 28, 1880.

40. Keleher, p. 300.

41. Nolan, p. 260.

42. Ibid., p. 258.

43. Ibid., pp. 260–61.

44. Ibid., p. 262.

45. Ibid., p. 264.

46. Ibid.,

47. Keleher, p. 315.

48. Ibid., pp. 317–18.

49. Utley, p. 175.

50. Keleher, p. 318.

51. Bell, p. 152.

52. Cramer, pp. 167–68.

53. Ibid., p. 168.

54. Mary Hudson Brothers, Billy the Kid (Farmington, N.M.: Hustler Press, 1949), p. 32.

55. Stephen Tatum, Inventing Billy the Kid (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), pp. 32–33.

56. Ibid., p. 33.

57. Bell, p. 155.

58. Nolan, p. 273.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

61. Bob Boze Bell interview with the author, Cave Creek, Arizona, November 10, 2004.

62. Las Vegas Daily Optic, May 4, 1881.

63. Lynda A. Sanchez, “They Loved Billy the Kid,” True West, vol. 31, no. 1 (January 1984), p. 14.

64. James Sanchez, interview with the author, Lincoln, New Mexico, November 19, 2004.

65. Nolan, p. 277.

66. Bell, p. 160.

67. Ibid.

68. Nolan, p. 280.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid., pp. 281–82.

71. Utley, p. 192.

EPILOGUE • BHIVATO

1. Paul Andrew Hutton, “Dreamscape Desperado,” New Mexico Magazine, vol. 68, no. 6 (June 1990), p. 57.

2. Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 287.

3. Ibid., pp. 287–88.

4. Santa Fe Weekly Democrat, July 21, 1881.