¿QUIÉN ES?
Thursday, July 14, 1881, old Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory
IT WAS FAST coming up on midnight, the witching hour. A full-blown moon worthy of a pack of wolves had emerged through the summer stars and would soon reach its highest elevation.
The Indians called this July full moon a buck moon since it coincided with the time when new antlers pushed out from the foreheads of buck deer. Other Indians, however, said it was a full thunder moon, because afternoon thunderstorms over the high desert plains were frequent at this time of year.
Folklore had it that full-moon nights brought out the worst in people and made for out-of-the-ordinary occurrences. Some folks reasoned that since a human body contained so much water, the moon surely could work its magic pull on people just as it did on the tides of the sea.
What is not folklore is that three armed men hunkered in the shadows of a big adobe house that had once lodged officer soldiers. Located on the Pecos River, this New Mexico Territory lodging had served as a government prison camp for tribal people forced from their homeland. But these men gave no thought to either lunar myths or Navajo and Apache ghosts lingering in their midst. This trio was man-hunting and paid no mind to anything but the business at hand. They listened to the liquid rustle of the cottonwood leaves down along the river, and they heard some muffled words in Spanish from dark figures sitting out in the nearby peach orchard bathed in summer moonlight.
In only minutes the end would come for the young prey the hunters sought. Billy would emerge before them through the shadows, fumbling with his trouser buttons, padding on stocking feet on his way to get some grub. A freshly butchered yearling was hanging from the portal, and he was carrying a kitchen knife to slice off some meat for a late-evening meal.
When two of the armed men first spotted him, he seemed a lunar mirage. But as he kept moving toward them, the two silhouettes on the porch stirred and spoke. The young man was startled. “¿Quién es? [Who is it?]” he hissed at them. He asked again, then a third time.
He backed away into the darkness and through a familiar door. The third manhunter had already gone inside and was sitting on the bed of the young man’s friend, Pete Maxwell. “¿Pedro, quiénes son esos hombres afuera? [Peter, who are those men outside?]” Billy asked.
Then he sensed the presence of the other man in the room.
“¿Quién es?” he asked, and then in English: “Who is it?”
The only reply was the sudden explosion of a single-action .44 Colt pistol. It was quickly followed by a second blast.
The young man, best known as Billy the Kid, crashed to the floor. He gurgled his final breath and lay dead in the dark shadows of the adobe dwelling. He died hungry and without his boots on. He died not knowing who had taken his life.
His last spoken words had formed the question ¿Quién es? How fitting that there was no response. There were even then so many unanswered questions about the young man who died in a shroud of darkness beneath a New Mexico moon full enough to burst.