16

The Escape

At 10:00 P.M. on April 16, 1881, deputies quietly loaded Billy the Kid into a wagon in front of the Mesilla jail and made ready to take the road to the east. As a precaution against either an attempted lynching or an attempted rescue, authorities had spread word that he would be sent to Lincoln County in the middle of the following week. Instead, on Saturday night they slipped him out of town under cover of darkness. Seven men rode guard—a deputy U.S. marshal, a deputy sheriff of Doña Ana County, and five men specially deputized for the mission.

Three of the guards could hardly be viewed as unbiased toward the prisoner. All three had fought for Jimmy Dolan in the Lincoln County War, and all three had participated in the fatal battle at the McSween house on July 19, 1878. Billy Mathews had headed the posse that killed Tunstall, had drilled Billy in the thigh at the time of the Brady killing, and had testified against him in Judge Bristol’s court. A second deputy was John Kinney, still the rustler king of southern New Mexico but, as in the final frays of the Lincoln County War, still not averse at times to playing lawman. The third was Charles Robert Olinger.

One of two brothers who had attached themselves to Hugh Beckwith’s clan at Seven Rivers, Bob Olinger had served as a deputy U.S. marshal for more than a year. He had ridden with Pat Garrett in the failed raid on Fort Sumner in November 1880, and he claimed Marshal Sherman’s chief deputy, Tony Neis, as a close friend. “Pecos Bob,” he styled himself, and his appearance fortified the label. A fellow officer described him as

two hundred pounds of bones and muscle, six feet tall, round as a huge tree trunk, with a regular gorilla-like chest that bulged out so far his chin seemed to be set back in his chest. He had a heavy bull neck, low-browed head, short and wide, topped with shaggy hair, bushy eyebrows, and a hat-rack mustache. His arms were long and muscular, with fists like hams. Despite his build and size he was quick as a cat, and always got the best of the deal in any encounter he figured in. He could take punishment as well as hand it out. He loved to show off, and it was one of his tricks to throw his .45’s and keep a string of fire from both muzzles as long as the bullets lasted.1

Olinger stirred contradictory emotions among those who knew him. “Bob Olinger was a damned rascal and deserved killing,” declared Gus Gildea. “Bob was a murderer,” said Jake Owens, who watched him extend a hand in friendship to a victim and coolly shoot him in the belly with the other. “Bob Olinger was considerate and generous,” recalled Lily Casey Klasner, who probably was in love with him. “Noble fellow. . . brave, generous, and true as steel,” pronounced the Santa Fe New Mexican.2

Whichever—and the weight of opinion brands him a callous bully—Olinger and Billy the Kid despised each other. Olinger held Billy responsible for the death of his friend Bob Beckwith in McSween’s backyard on the night of the final shootout. According to an acquaintance, Olinger declared that the Kid “was a cur and that every man he had killed had been murdered in cold blood and without the slightest chance of defending himself.” “There was a reciprocal hatred between these two,” observed Pat Garrett, “and neither attempted to disguise or conceal his antipathy for the other.”3

With a perverse satisfaction that he made no effort to hide, Olinger settled in the wagon on the seat facing Billy, who was handcuffed and shackled with leg-irons to the back seat. Kinney climbed in beside Billy, and Mathews hoisted himself into the seat next to Olinger. Deputy Sheriff Dave Woods drove the wagon, and Tom Williams, D. M. Reade, and W. A. Lockhart rode flank and rear.

In Las Cruces, the party paused in front of the newspaper office of Harry Newman. The Kid, reported Newman, “appeared quite cheerful and remarked that he wanted to stay with the boys until their whiskey gave out, anyway. Said he was sure his guard would not hurt him unless a rescue should be attempted and he was certain that would not be done unless perhaps ‘those fellows over at White Oaks come out to take me,’ meaning to kill him.” He made some unflattering comments about the Mesilla jail and John Chisum, and off the cavalcade clattered.4

The officers and their charge took almost five days to reach Fort Stanton. On April 20 they spent the night at Blazer’s Mills, where the loquacious Billy reenacted in pantomime the shootout of April 4, 1878, and the killing of Buckshot Roberts. The next day, at Fort Stanton, Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett formally took responsibility for the Kid, and the party rode on into Lincoln.5

Lincoln had never had a jail, observed Garrett, “that would hold a cripple.”6 Billy was hardly a cripple, and the sheriff, keenly aware of his prisoner’s daring and cunning, decided not to drop him into the old cellar jail. Instead, he would be confined under constant guard in a room next to the sheriff’s office in the newly acquired county courthouse. This was the old Murphy-Dolan store on the west end of town that had played so conspicuous a part in the Lincoln County War. Billy was lodged in the northeast corner room on the second floor. The task of guarding him was assigned to Bob Olinger and Deputy James W. Bell.

As Garrett well knew, Billy’s fertile mind dwelled constantly on how to get free. Unrealistically, as he had revealed in Mesilla, he still hoped that Governor Wallace might pardon him. Also, lawyer Fountain had given the Kid reason to think further legal stratagems were worth pursuing. On April 15, while still in the Mesilla jail, Billy had written to attorney Edgar Caypless in Santa Fe urging him to press the suit to recover the contested mare, sell her, and turn over the money to Fountain.7 And finally, of course, he schemed endlessly to contrive a plan of escape—a vaulting aim considering handcuffs, leg-irons, and two watchful guards.

Olinger’s persistent taunting spurred the determination to get free. “Olinger was mean to him,” testified the Kid’s friend John Meadows. “In talking about it to me Kid said, ‘He used to work me up until I could hardly contain myself.’”8

By contrast, Bell treated Billy well. As a close friend of Jimmy Carlyle’s, whose death at the Greathouse ranch everyone held Billy responsible for, Bell had good reason to despise his charge. But he was kindly, generous, and widely liked, and he did not take out his spite on the helpless prisoner. “Never, by word or action, did he betray his prejudice, if it existed,” said Garrett of Bell. In return, Billy had confidence in Bell and “appeared to have taken a liking to him.”9

Garrett also treated Billy considerately. They discussed the boy’s various exploits and impending fate. As always, Billy was adept at self-justification. “He appeared to have a plausible excuse for each and every crime charged against him,” said Garrett, “except, perhaps, the killing of Carlyle.” At times he seemed to Garrett on the point of talking openly, but always he would draw back and intimate that no one would believe any explanation he made. “He expressed no enmity towards me,” related Garrett, “but evinced respect and confidence in me. . . acknowledging that I had only done my duty, without malice, and had treated him with marked leniency and kindness.”10

“I knew the desperate character of the man,” said Garrett later, “that he was daring and unscrupulous, and that he would sacrifice the lives of a hundred men who stood between him and liberty.”11 Repeatedly cautioning Olinger and Bell never to relax their vigilance, the sheriff laid down procedures to ensure that Billy had no chance to make a break.

A friend gave Olinger a similar warning. “You think yourself an old hand in the business,” he warned. “But I tell you, as good a man as you are, that if that man is shown the slightest chance on earth, if he is allowed the use of one hand, or if he is not watched every moment from now until the moment he is executed, he will effect some plan by which he will murder the whole lot of you before you have time to even suspect that he has any such intention.”

Olinger just smiled and replied that the Kid had no more chance of escaping than of going to heaven.12

On April 28, with Garrett in White Oaks collecting taxes, Billy made his move. Whether he planned it in advance or acted on impulse is not known. His mind may have been set in motion that morning by more of Olinger’s abuse. Ostentatiously, the deputy loaded his double-barreled shotgun with eighteen buckshot in each barrel. Looking meaningfully at the Kid, he remarked, “The man that gets one of those loads will feel it.”

“I expect he will,” Billy replied, “but be careful, Bob, or you might shoot yourself accidentally.”13

Bell and Olinger were responsible for five other prisoners as well, held in another room of the courthouse. They had been arrested a week earlier at South Fork after a dispute over water rights erupted in gunfire, taking the lives of four Tularosa residents. Now the accused murderers awaited grand jury action. About 6:00 P.M. on Thursday evening April 28, Olinger escorted these men across the street to the Wortley Hotel for dinner.14

The Kid asked Bell to take him to the privy behind the courthouse. Returning, Bell carelessly lagged behind. An interior staircase connected a back door with the upstairs center hall. Although burdened with leg-irons and chains, Billy reached the top of the stairs before his guard and turned into the hall out of view. Handcuffs did not pose a problem for Billy because his hands were smaller than his wrists. Quickly he slipped the cuffs off one wrist. When Bell appeared at the head of the stairs, Billy swung the loose cuff in vicious blows that laid open two gashes on the guard’s scalp. Bell went down, Billy jumped on him, and the two scuffled for Bell’s holstered revolver. Billy later explained that he wanted to get the drop on Bell, handcuff him to Olinger, and make his escape.

In the struggle, Billy succeeded in seizing the pistol, but Bell worked loose and headed for the stairway. Billy fired, and Bell tumbled down the stairs.

“Kid told me exactly how it was done,” said John Meadows. “He said he was lying on the floor on his stomach, and shot Bell as he ran down the stairs. Kid said of this killing, ‘I did not want to kill Bell, but I had to do so in order to save my own life. It was a case of have to, not wanting to.’”15

Walking across the yard behind the courthouse, Godfrey Gauss heard the shot and the commotion. As cook for the Tunstall hands on the Feliz three years earlier, the old German knew Billy well. Now, with Sam Wortley, he shared a little dwelling and tended a garden behind the courthouse. Before his startled eyes Bell burst from the back door and lunged toward him. “He ran right into my arms,” related Gauss, “expired the same moment, and I laid him down dead.”16

Upstairs, meantime, Billy got to his feet and dragged his shackled legs into Garrett’s office. There he scooped up Olinger’s loaded shotgun and made his way to the northeast corner room. A window in the east wall opened onto a yard below, enclosed by a low plank fence with a gate affording entry from the street. Resting the shotgun on the windowsill, Billy waited.

Below, Gauss ran from the backyard just as Olinger and his prisoners, alerted by the gunfire, appeared in front of the Wortley Hotel. Gauss yelled for him to come quickly. Ordering the prisoners to stand firm, Olinger hurried across the street and opened the gate.

“Bob, the Kid has killed Bell,” cried Gauss.

Olinger looked up and exclaimed, “Yes, and he’s killed me too.”

As Billy recalled it, “I stuck the gun through the window and said, ‘Look up, old boy, and see what you get.’ Bob looked up, and I let him have both barrels right in the face and breast.” Olinger crumpled, his head and upper body shredded by the thirty-six heavy buckshot he himself had packed into the twin barrels of his shotgun.17

Next the Kid went to the window at the south end of the hallway overlooking the backyard and shouted at Gauss, who had made tracks for the shelter of his abode.

“Gauss, pitch me up that old pick-axe lying out there,” he said, “and let me get this chain between my feet broke in two with it.”

“Look out, Billy, here she comes,” said Gauss, who willingly cooperated through both fear and friendship.

Billy then ordered Gauss to saddle up a horse in the corral that belonged to Billy Burt, deputy clerk of the probate court.18

With the pick, Billy succeeded in severing the chain connecting his leg shackles. Looping the ends over his belt, he walked to the north end of the hall and appeared on a balcony overlooking the street. A knot of men, including the other prisoners, stood in front of the Wortley Hotel while a scattering of citizens watched silently from more distant parts of the street. Two townsmen started for their Winchesters but were restrained by others. “The balance of the population,” according to an observer, “whether friends or enemies of the Kid, manifested no disposition to molest him.”19

One of the men in front of the hotel described the scene:

It was more than an hour, after he killed Olinger and Bell, before he left. He had at his command eight revolvers and six guns [rifles]. He stood on the upper porch in front of the building and talked with the people who were in Wortley’s, but would not let anyone come towards him. He told the people that he did not want to kill Bell but, as he ran, he had to. He said he grabbed Bell’s revolver and told him to hold up his hands and surrender; that Bell decided to run and he had to kill him. He declared he was “standing pat” against the world; and, while he did not wish to kill anybody, if anybody interfered with his attempt to escape he would kill him.20

Gauss had trouble saddling Burt’s spirited pony but at length led him to the front of the building and tied him to the hitching rail. Before descending, Billy smashed Olinger’s shotgun over the porch railing and hurled the pieces at his victim’s bloody corpse.

“Here is your gun, God damn you,” he shouted. “You won’t follow me with it any longer.”21

Emerging from the back door at the foot of the stairs, the Kid glanced down at the motionless form of Jim Bell.

“I’m sorry I had to kill you,” he said, “but couldn’t help it.”

He then made his way around the building to the street, where he paused at Olinger’s body.

“You are not going to round me up again,” he said, nudging the corpse with the tip of his boot.22

Encumbered with shackles and chain as well as pistols and rifles, Billy encountered difficulty controlling the skittish pony. As he tried to swing into the saddle, the animal broke loose and trotted toward the river. He called to Alex Nunnelly, one of Olinger’s prisoners standing in front of the hotel, to catch the animal and bring it back. Nunnelly hesitated, but a quick motion by Billy prompted him to do as ordered.

“Old fellow,” observed the Kid, “if you hadn’t gone for this horse, I would have killed you.”23

Firmly planted in the saddle, his chains slapping his legs and thighs, Billy the Kid pointed his mount to the west and rode out of Lincoln.

“Tell Billy Burt I will send his horse back to him,” he called as he vanished in the distance.24

He left behind a stunned town of Lincoln, whose citizens, said Garrett, “appeared to be terror-stricken.” He thought the Kid could have ridden up and down the town’s only street until dark without interference from a single resident. “A little sympathy might have actuated some of them, but most of the people were, doubtless, paralyzed with fear when it was whispered that the dreaded desperado, the Kid, was at liberty and had slain his guards.”25

The news shocked the entire territory. The spectacular breakout, so clever in conception and bold in execution, validated Billy the Kid’s reputation as a “dreaded desperado.” Five months earlier, prompted by the Las Vegas Gazette, the territorial press had built him up as New Mexico’s premier desperado. He had not earned such fame; his genuine deeds, however remarkable in one so young, did not qualify him for the distinction. The sensational bolt from Lincoln, however, transformed him into the territory’s foremost outlaw in fact as well as in name.

In name he emerged in blacker form than ever, as newspapers drenched him in rhetorical excess. In one breathless paragraph, the Las Vegas Optic branded him a “young demon,” a “terror and disgrace of New Mexico,” a “flagrant violator of every law,” a “murderer from infancy.” He was “malignant and cruel,” “urged by a spirit as hideous as hell,” blind to “the drooping forms of widows and the tear-stained eyes of orphans.” “With a heart untouched to pity by misfortune, and with a character possessing the attributes of the damned, he has reveled in brutal murder and gloried in his shame. He has broken more loving hearts and filled more untimely graves than he has lived years, and that he is again turned loose like some devouring beast on the public is cause at once for consternation and regret.”26

While execrating his character, editors could not suppress admiration for his dramatic leap to freedom. It displayed, said the New Mexican, “a subtle calculation on the part of the prisoner, and a coolness and steadiness of nerve in executing his plan of escape, that the highly wrought story of Dick Turpin can hardly furnish a counterpart to.”27

Such commentary on Billy’s exploit contained little exaggeration. Traits first manifested in the Lincoln County War combined to produce a brilliant if tragically bloody feat. Crafty, utterly fearless, heedless of risk, cool under stress, instantly unflinching in taking any life that stood in his way, he surpassed both his guards in skill and intellect. Billy’s sunny exterior concealed a powerfully coiled spring held in by a hair-trigger. When the spring was released, he struck like a rattlesnake, swiftly and fatally.

The guards gave Billy his opening—Olinger from arrogance and conceit, Bell from a kindly disposition lulled by Billy’s relaxed good cheer. In the face of Garrett’s repeated admonitions, they both underestimated their prisoner. In return, Billy killed them, Bell regretfully, Olinger jubilantly, both unhesitatingly.

Billy the Kid rode out of Lincoln on Thursday evening, April 28, 1881. In White Oaks, Pat Garrett learned of the escape the next day and promptly sent a rider overland to Socorro, on the railroad, with a message to the sheriff there: “I have just received news from Lincoln by courier that Billy the Kid escaped yesterday evening, after killing Deputy Sheriffs J. W. Bell and Bob Ollinger.” Not until Saturday night, April 30, did a one-line telegram from Socorro bring the news to Governor Lew Wallace in Santa Fe.

Only hours earlier the governor himself had written out a document that he supposed would end his troubled association with Billy the Kid. It was a death warrant, which the law required him to sign before an execution could take place. It directed that, on May 13, 1881, between the hours of 10:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M., the sheriff of Lincoln County remove William Bonney from the county jail and “hang the said William Bonny, alias Kid, alias William Antrim, by the neck until he is dead. And make due return of your acts hereunder.”28

As commanded, the sheriff made “due return” under the date of May 24: “I hereby certify that the within warrant was not served owing to the fact that the within named prisoner escaped before the day set for serving said warrant. Pat F. Garrett, Sheriff of Lincoln County.”29