7

The Shootout

Like most of his neighbors on the Ruidoso, Andrew L. Roberts had a murky past. It may have included a stint as a hunter for Buffalo Bill Cody, and it may have involved a shootout with the Texas Rangers. He rarely talked of his past and minded his own business, but the load of buckshot he carried in his right shoulder suggested that he could be a scrapper if pressed. The wound prevented him from raising his arm above the waist, which forced him to do his firing, rifle and pistol, from the hip. He was short and stocky and preferred a mule to a horse. He ran a few cows on the upper Ruidoso, where he had made friends with Frank Coe, and also worked occasionally for Jimmy Dolan at his branch store at South Fork, near Blazer’s Mills.

As Dolan employees, Buckshot Roberts and George Hindman had been tapped by Billy Mathews for posse service when Mathews arrived at the South Fork store on February 12, 1878. They rode with him to the Tunstall ranch on the next day and again on February 18. Roberts had been at the ranch with Mathews and others when Morton’s subposse cut down Tunstall, but his name had wound up on the arrest warrant issued by Justice Wilson. That Governor Axtell had in effect invalidated that much-worn document, as well as Dick Brewer’s commission as special constable, had not discouraged the Regulators from their self-appointed mission.

Roberts wanted no part of the troubles that had engulfed Lincoln County and had singled him out as a target for the other side. He sold his ranch to someone in Santa Fe and awaited only the arrival of the payment before clearing out of the county altogether. That the check might be in the mail carrier’s pouch brought him over the mountain to South Fork on the morning of April 4.1

Cradled by forested slopes rising on both sides of a narrow valley, Blazer’s Mills spread along the north bank of the upper Tularosa River, here a mountain stream about ten feet wide. Over the span of a decade, Dr. Joseph H. Blazer, a former dentist, had emerged as the leading citizen of the little frontier community. The surrounding Indian reservation had come later, and whether Blazer’s property belonged to him or the U.S. government remained an unresolved issue. Despite the standoff, Blazer got along reasonably well with the Indian agent, Frederick C. Godfroy. Indeed, Blazer had leased his big house to the government for use as the agent’s residence.

This house, a two-story adobe fortress surmounted by a cupola, faced the river about two hundred yards upstream from the sawmill and gristmill. Agent Godfroy and his family occupied the house and occasionally took in lodgers. Mrs. Godfroy cooked meals for travelers. Blazer, who lived with his family in another dwelling immediately to the east, maintained an office in one room on the northwest corner of the big house. A shed tacked to the rear housed the Blazer store.

Mounted on his mule and trailing a packhorse, Buckshot Roberts showed up at the big house on the morning of April 4. He hoped to receive his money from the mail carrier due that day, he explained to Dr. Blazer, then continue to Las Cruces. He had best move on, Blazer said. An Indian had just reported a band of men on the road to the west. They had killed a steer from the agency beef herd the night before, said the Indian, and were headed east. Suspecting these men to be Regulators and wanting no gunplay on his property, Blazer urged Roberts to leave.

Why the Regulators had come west of the divide, beyond the theater of war, remains unclear. They themselves dropped some vague explanations about men they wanted to arrest being reported on the Tularosa. Lawrence Murphy furnished another explanation when he alerted the military at Fort Stanton that the Regulators had ridden west to ambush the judicial party traveling from Mesilla to hold court in Lincoln. A massacre of the judge, the district attorney, the clerk of the court, and other officials would have been as reckless as the murder of Sheriff Brady, but the tip was taken seriously enough to prompt dispatch of a cavalry escort to meet the supposed victims.2

Whatever the Regulators’ mission, there they were on the Tularosa only two days after the murder of Sheriff Brady. Dick Brewer had fourteen men, including the Coes, Middleton, McNab, Scurlock, Brown, Waite, and Bowdre. Even Billy Bonney and Jim French, surely sitting their saddles in pain as a result of the bullet Billy Mathews had drilled through their thighs, rode with their fellow subscribers to the “iron clad.”3 They reined in at Blazer’s Mills late on the morning of April 4, herded their mounts into a corral surrounded by a high board fence across the river from the big house, and asked Mrs. Godfroy to fix them dinner.

Roberts, meantime, had heeded Dr. Blazer’s appeal and headed west, following a mountain trail rather than the main road to avoid the Regulators. He saw them riding back up the road but later also spotted the mail buckboard laboring up the grade toward Blazer’s Mills. Turning back in hopes of getting his check, he scouted the little settlement from a distance. He saw no sign of the Regulators, whose horses were hidden behind Blazer’s corral fence, and assumed that they had ridden on to the east. Tying his packhorse to a tree, he prodded his mule across the valley to pick up his mail.

John Middleton lounged on guard outside while the Regulators ate inside. Seeing Roberts approach, he went in and reported a “mighty well-armed man” riding up on a mule and said he had heard the man give his name as Roberts. Brewer said, “I have a warrant for Roberts.” Frank Coe, who knew Roberts, went outside alone to talk with him.4

Too late Roberts discovered his blunder. He had tied his mule at the southwest corner of the house and, respecting a rule of Dr. Blazer’s, draped his pistol belt over the saddle horn. Winchester carbine in hand, he was making his way toward the front door when Frank Coe emerged. The two shook hands, then walked around the corner of the house to the west to have a talk. Impatiently, Brewer and his comrades waited to see if Frank could persuade Roberts to surrender.

Frank found Buckshot as stubborn as reputed. Sitting on an uncovered plank porch in front of the door to Dr. Blazer’s office, Coe tried to talk his friend into giving up.

“No,” answered Roberts, “never alive. The Kid is with you and he will kill me on sight.”5

“No,” said Coe, “give me your gun and we’ll walk around to the crowd. I’ll stand by you.”

“We talked for half an hour,” remembered Coe. “I begged him to surrender, but the answer was no, no, no. I think he was the bravest man I ever met—not a bit excited, knowing too that his life was in his hands.”

Brewer could contain his impatience no longer. He sent a handful of his men storming around the house to end the stalemate. Backed by Middleton and George Coe, Charley Bowdre appeared immediately in front of the pair.

“Roberts, throw up your hands,” he yelled.

“No,” replied Buckshot, as he rose to his feet and brought his carbine up to his hip.

Both fired at the same time. Roberts’s bullet smashed Bowdre’s buckle and dropped his pistol belt to the ground, then ricocheted into George Coe’s right hand, mangling his thumb and trigger finger. Bowdre’s bullet punched through Roberts’s stomach just above the hips. “The dust flew from his clothes from both sides,” noted Frank Coe, who had leapt to get out of the line of fire.

Brewer’s other men dashed into the fray as Roberts, grievously wounded, backed into the doorway of Dr. Blazer’s office while pumping his carbine from the hip. “I never saw a man that could handle a Winchester as fast as he could,” marveled Frank Coe later. A bullet thudded into John Middleton’s chest and lodged in a lung. Another hit the barrel of Doc Scurlock’s holstered pistol and coursed down his leg, “burning him like a hot iron.”6 Still another almost got Billy Bonney. “The Kid slipped in between the wall and a wagon,” recalled Frank Coe. “Roberts took a shot at him, just shaved his arm. Kid backed out as it was too hot there for him.”7

Billy had seen Roberts’s cartridge belt and pistol on his saddle and knew how many rounds the magazine of his carbine held. When Roberts had emptied his weapon, therefore, the Kid dashed to the porch and, thrusting his Winchester at Roberts, pulled the trigger. At the same instant Roberts shoved the muzzle of his empty carbine into the Kid’s midriff, knocking him breathless and deflecting his aim. The bullet smashed the doorjamb. Quickly, once again, the Kid backed out.8

Roberts did not remain weaponless for long. Although in searing pain from his stomach wound, he stumbled into the room behind him. On a wall mounting he spotted Dr. Blazer’s single-shot Springfield rifle and found a box of cartridges that fit it. Dragging a mattress from a bed, he barricaded the door, lay down with the rifle, and made ready to continue the fight.

Brewer was furious over the intransigence of Roberts and the casualties incurred in trying to arrest him. “He ordered me to go into the room to put the man out,” recalled David Easton, “which I refused to do. I begged Brewer to take his men and go off. Brewer replied that he would have that man out if he had to pull the house down.” Brewer next turned on Dr. Blazer and Agent Godfroy, who had come in for dinner, and commanded them to get Roberts out of the house. When they also balked, Brewer threatened to burn it down. Finally, he set off to try to get Roberts himself.9

Crossing the river on a footbridge, Brewer circled around the corral and made his way down the valley toward the mills. About 125 yards west of the big house, he came across a pile of logs, assembled for Blazer’s sawmill. Crawling in behind the logs, he discovered that his rifle covered the entire west side of the big house, including the open door to Blazer’s office. Taking careful aim on the door, Dick fired.

Inside Blazer’s office, Brewer’s bullet slammed into the wall behind Roberts, blowing particles of adobe onto the floor. Glancing down the valley, Roberts saw smoke from Brewer’s rifle drifting away from the logs. Propping Blazer’s rifle on the mattress, he sighted on the log where the smoke had been and waited. Soon the top of Brewer’s head appeared. Buckshot squeezed the trigger. The big Springfield blasted. The bullet hit Brewer in the left eye, leaving a tiny blue mark, then blew the back of his skull into fragments.

“After that no one tried to get Roberts,” observed Frank Coe. They knew he would die, and three of their own were hurting badly. Middleton had taken a severe chest wound that all thought would prove fatal. Dr. Blazer did what he could for the wounded, and Agent Godfroy provided a government wagon to transport them over the mountain.

En route the Regulators met Dr. Daniel Appel, Fort Stanton’s military surgeon, who had already been summoned by a courier from Blazer’s Mills. He gave some first aid, then hurried on to minister to Roberts.

The bullet in Middleton’s lung did in fact prove fatal, but not for another seven or eight years. Almost miraculously, he continued to fight with the Regulators. As for George Coe, the Reverend Doctor Ealy recalled that “I took off a thumb and finger for him after that fight.”10

Back at Blazer’s Mills, no one dared approach Roberts’s little fortress. He would not believe that his assailants had left. Finally Dolan storekeeper John Ryan made his way warily up the slope from the west with a white flag. A little old man and a friend of Roberts’s, he managed to get close enough to be recognized. Dr. Blazer tended Roberts until Dr. Appel arrived that night, but the wound was plainly fatal.

Buckshot Roberts died the next day. A carpenter nailed together two coffins, covered them with black muslin and lined them with white, and the two dead men were given a Christian burial on the hillside behind Dr. Blazer’s big house.

On the heels of the Brady murder, Blazer’s Mills cost the McSween faction still more public sympathy. Even the death of the popular Brewer—“one of nature’s noblemen,” McSween called him—did not offset the feeling that Buckshot Roberts had fallen before an overwhelming and somehow unfair onslaught. His courageous defense, moreover, earned the admiration of people who set high store on skilled gunfighting. And the reports, however untrue, that the Regulators had plotted to kill Judge Bristol and his fellow travelers angered people who saw the courts as the only hope of ending the warfare in Lincoln County.

Once again, Billy Bonney had cemented his bonds to his comrades of the “iron clad” and had demonstrated his dedication to the Regulator mission. By rushing Roberts in the doorway of Blazer’s office, he had also once again shown the brand of reckless bravery that had sent him into the street, under fire, after the killing of Brady. Neither their purpose nor their performance at Blazer’s Mills gave the Regulators much to brag about. But for Billy it was one more exciting experience in the education of a gunfighter.