17

The Execution

As Billy Bonney trotted out of Lincoln on the evening of April 28, 1881, he could count on the help of many friends. After riding about a quarter of a mile west on the Fort Stanton road, he veered to the north and crossed the river into the Capitan foothills. He paused at the home of Ataviano Salas, whose son-in-law, Francisco Gómez, poured him a cup of coffee laced with goat’s milk and listened to his story of the escape. The fugitive then rode to the home of José Cordova in Salazar Canyon. Cordova and Scipio Salazar freed him from his shackles. Next Billy headed up the canyon toward the Capitan summit, aiming for Las Tablas, on the other side of the mountains. Here lived his old compadre from the Lincoln County War, Yginio Salazar.1

“I talked with Kid at my house at Las Tablas the next day,” recalled Salazar. “The Kid laid off there for three days. He laid out in the hills and came to my house to eat. I told him to leave this place and go to Old Mexico.” While Billy slept one night near Las Tablas, his horse pulled loose from a sotol stalk and made its way back to Lincoln, to be reclaimed by its owner.2

Stealing a horse from a Las Tablas resident, the Kid headed east, circling the north base of the Capitans to Agua Azul, then headed south, crossing the Ruidoso above San Patricio, and making his way to the Peñasco. There he spent a night at the cabin of another old friend, John Meadows. Until late at night, the two sat on a hillside talking. Meadows suspected that the Kid had come to the Peñasco to do away with Billy Mathews, who had a ranch nearby. Although Bonney denied that he would harm Mathews even if given the chance, he may well have thought to settle old scores. Somehow, the newspapers got word that he had in fact shot and killed his enemy, but the report turned out to be untrue.3

Like Salazar, Meadows urged the Kid to flee into Old Mexico and start life anew. Billy’s southward course from Agua Azul may indicate that he was already heeding this advice. But Fort Sumner pulled at him too. It was familiar, congenial, full of friends who would help him, and home to a bevy of damsels who adored him. He thought he would go there, he told Meadows.

“Sure as you do,” warned his friend, “Garrett will get you, or you will have to kill him.”

“Don’t you worry,” replied Billy, “I’ve got too many friends up there. Anyhow I don’t believe he will try to get me. I can stay there awhile and get enough [money] to go to Mexico on.”

The next morning Billy faced his horse toward Fort Sumner. A couple of days later, at Conejos Springs, he lay asleep in his blankets when Jim Cureton and some cowboys rode nearby rounding up cattle. Startled, the Kid jumped up. The sudden movement alarmed his horse, which bolted and left him afoot. A twenty-mile hike brought him to Fort Sumner, which he reached on Saturday May 7, nine days after his escape from Lincoln.4

That night Billy slipped into Sumner and found a tethered horse. It belonged to Montgomery Bell, a rancher from fifty miles upriver who had come to town on business. Billy mounted and rode away bareback. Sunday morning Bell reported the theft to Barney Mason, still a deputy sheriff. Joined by Jim Cureton, Mason took the trail. About fifteen miles down the Pecos they overhauled the quarry at a sheep camp. With four Hispanic allies, Billy made ready for a fight. Mason turned tail; he knew that his part in Stinking Springs, where he had proposed to shoot Billy after he surrendered, had made him a prime target. Cureton, unarmed, rode forward and talked with the Kid, who asked him to tell Bell that he would either return the stolen horse or pay for it.5

Once again, even though a hunted man, Billy Bonney settled into the comfortable life of Fort Sumner. He drifted from one sheep camp to another, bunked at times at a ranch or farm, and on occasion brazenly slipped into Sumner itself to stomp merrily at a baile or keep a tryst with one of his female admirers.

As the spring weeks slipped by, the public’s astonishment and outrage over Bonney’s spectacular breakout gave no sign of subsiding. As far away as New York and San Francisco, people waited in fascinated suspense to learn whether the fearless young killer would remain at large. Governor Wallace offered another five-hundred-dollar reward for his capture but did not stay around to gauge its effect. The new president had named him minister to the court of the Turkish sultan, a post exactly suited to his romantic temperament, and on May 30 he boarded a Pullman sleeper to put New Mexico behind him forever.

No one who read the newspapers could doubt that Bonney was living, not very secretly, around Fort Sumner. Beginning with the theft of Bell’s horse, the Las Vegas press regularly reported his presence in Sumner. As the Gazette observed on May 19, “Billy keeps well posted on matters in the outside world as he is well thought of by many of the Mexicans who take him all the newspapers they can get hold of. He is not far from Ft. Sumner and has not left that neighborhood since he rode over from Lincoln after making his break.” Added the New Mexican on June 16: “The people regard him with a feeling half of fear and half of admiration, submit to his depredations, and some of them even go so far as to aid him in avoiding capture.”

The press even picked up a wild tale of Billy’s continuing feud with John Chisum. Billy was said to have ridden up to a Chisum cow camp and shot one of three herders through the brain. To the others he said, “Now, I want you to live to take a message to old John Chisum for me. Tell him during the Lincoln county war he promised to pay me $5 a day for fighting for him. I fought for him and never got a cent. Now, I intend to kill his men wherever I meet them, giving him credit for $5 every time I drop one until the debt is squared.”6 Later exposed as entirely false, the story, besides placing Billy in the Fort Sumner area, nonetheless accurately projected the image that was taking shape in the public mind.

Garrett puzzled over what to do. On the one hand, repeated reports from Fort Sumner convinced him that Billy must be there. On the other, as he said, “it seemed incredible that he should linger in the Territory.” “He was never taken for a fool, but was credited with the possession of extraordinary forethought and cool judgment, for one of his age.”7

Simply riding up to Sumner and searching for the fugitive was hardly an answer. As Garrett later explained, the Kid returned to his familiar retreats because “he said he was safer out on the plains, and could always get something to eat among the sheep herders. So he decided to take his chances out there where he was hard to get at.”8 Short of leaving New Mexico altogether, he was right. Garrett knew that he could not count on the cooperation of the residents, who would turn away in fear or alert the quarry and hide him. Only by the wildest accident of good fortune could he hope to succeed.

In June Garrett wrote to Manuel Brazil, the Fort Sumner rancher whose help had been critical in cornering the Kid and his cohorts at Stinking Springs, and asked if he had seen any sign of Billy. Brazil replied that he had not seen Billy but was sure enough of his proximity to keep out of sight in fear of his vengeance. Garrett received the letter in Lincoln early in July.9

Similar word came from another source—John W. Poe. This stocky former buffalo hunter with a drooping mustache had made a name for himself as a law officer in the Texas Panhandle. Impressed with his steady competence, the ranchers hired him to replace Frank Stewart as detective for the Panhandle Stock Association. Arriving in White Oaks in March 1881, Poe took up the probe, launched by his predecessors, of the relationship between the Pecos Valley rustlers and beef entrepreneur Pat Coghlan. Poe also fell in with Sheriff Pat Garrett and agreed to be commissioned a deputy sheriff of Lincoln County.10

Early in July, about the time of Brazil’s letter to Garrett, Poe received a tip from an old acquaintance who had fallen on alcoholic bad times and was sleeping in the loft of the West and Diedrick stable. One night he had overheard two men, probably West and Diedrick, talking below. Their conversation made it clear that Billy the Kid was hiding out in Fort Sumner and in fact had twice visited White Oaks. Although skeptical, Poe took this information to Garrett in Lincoln. Together with Brazil’s letter, Poe’s report prompted Garrett to mount an expedition to Fort Sumner.11

Under cover of darkness, the sheriff’s little posse pushed off from Roswell on July 10. Besides Garrett and Poe, a third officer had been recruited. He was Thomas K. (Tip) McKinney. Traveling mostly at night on little-used trails, the trio reached the mouth of Taiban Creek, below Fort Sumner, on the night of the thirteenth. Garrett had asked Manuel Brazil to meet him here, but Brazil failed to show up. The lawmen slept until daylight.12

The next step was up to John Poe. Since no one in Fort Sumner knew him, the three men decided that he should ride into town and learn what he could. If that proved futile, he was to go on up the Pecos to Sunnyside and talk with Postmaster Milnor Rudulph, whom Garrett thought might be willing to tell what he knew. After dark the three were to get back together at a designated point four miles north of Sumner.

Poe carried out his mission capably. His appearance in town aroused instant suspicion. He explained that he lived in White Oaks but was returning to his home in the Panhandle for a visit. In Beaver Smith’s saloon he ate and drank with townsmen, virtually all Hispanics, but failed to pry any information out of them. The most offhand reference to Billy the Kid silenced everyone and intensified the obvious distrust with which all greeted the stranger. “There was a very tense situation in Fort Sumner on that day,” Poe later wrote, “as the Kid was at that very time hiding in one of the native’s houses there.”

In midafternoon Poe mounted and rode up the Pecos seven miles to Sunnyside. Presenting Garrett’s letter of introduction, he received a friendly welcome from Milnor Rudulph. After supper Poe broached the subject of Billy the Kid. Instantly Rudulph turned nervous and evasive. He had heard that Billy was in the area, he said, but he did not believe it. Further questioning produced only more agitated equivocation. At dusk, to his host’s evident relief, Poe saddled up and rode down the river to rendezvous with his comrades.

In the darkness the three pondered their next move. The reaction of the villagers to Poe’s visit, the behavior of Rudulph, and the tips from Brazil and from Poe’s informant all pointed to Billy’s presence somewhere around Fort Sumner. Yet the foolhardiness of such a course left all three with doubts too. At length they decided to slip into Sumner under cover of darkness, keep watch for a time on a dwelling that Garrett knew housed one of Billy’s paramours, and then hunt up Pete Maxwell and talk with him. He might reveal something.13

On the north edge of Sumner, the lawmen chanced across the camp of a traveler. Coincidentally, he turned out to be an old friend of Poe’s, from Texas.14 Unsaddling here, the trio fortified themselves with coffee and then proceeded on foot. At about 9:00 P.M. they quietly took a station among the trees of a peach orchard on the northern fringe of the community. A bright moon illumined the scene. On the east side of the old parade ground were buildings that had once served as barracks for soldiers. On the west stood a line of dwellings that had housed officers. One had been fixed up as a residence for the Maxwells. Across the parade ground from the orchard, fronting the south side, the old quartermaster storehouse had been divided into rooms. At one end, hidden by officers’ row, was Beaver Smith’s saloon. Billy’s friend Bob Campbell lived at the other end, and next door to him lived Sabal and Celsa Gutierrez.15

As the lawmen crept closer to the buildings, they suddenly heard muffled voices talking in Spanish. Crouching motionless behind trees, they listened. The people were in the orchard too, not far distant, but their words could not be understood. “Soon a man arose from the ground,” said Garrett, “in full view, but too far away to recognize. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, a dark vest and pants, and was in his shirt sleeves.” He said something, jumped the fence, and walked into the compound.16

Garrett did not recognize the figure, and learned only afterward that he was Billy the Kid. Whom he had been with and where he went after entering the old fort depends on which account one wants to accept. He may have ended up with Bob Campbell, or Celsa Gutierrez, or Deluvina Maxwell, or Jesús Silva and Francisco Lobato, among others.17 He is not likely to have gone to Paulita’s, since she lived with her family in the big house on officers’ row and since his companion seems to have been someone in one of the rooms of the old quartermaster building.

Here, after shucking his hat, vest, and boots, Billy decided that he wanted something to eat. A freshly butchered yearling hung from a rafter on Maxwell’s north porch. With a butcher knife in his left hand and his Colt “self-cocker” in his right, he shuffled out in his stockinged feet to cut a slab of meat.18

By now, nearly midnight, Garrett and his companions had backed out of the orchard, circled behind the officers’ line on the west, and reached the Maxwell house. It was a long adobe, shadowed by porches on three sides. A picket fence with a gate separated the east face from the old parade ground. As Garrett knew, Maxwell slept in the southeast corner room. In the July heat, the door and windows stood open. Leaving Poe and McKinney outside, Garrett entered the door, walked across the room, and sat on the edge of Maxwell’s bed, next to the pillow.

Outside, the two deputies waited. McKinney squatted on the ground outside the fence. Poe sat on the edge of the porch, dangling his feet in the open gateway.

Within seconds of Garrett’s disappearance into Maxwell’s bedroom, Poe glanced to his right and saw a figure approaching along the inside of the fence. In the moonlight, Poe recalled, “I observed that he was only partially dressed and was both bareheaded and barefooted, or rather, had only socks on his feet, and it seemed to me that he was fastening his trousers as he came toward me at a very brisk walk.” Poe thought this might be Maxwell himself or one of his guests.

The man came almost face-to-face with Poe before spotting him. Startled, he recoiled, covered Poe with his pistol, and sprang to the porch, hissing “Quien es?” As he backed away, toward the door to Maxwell’s bedroom, he repeated “Quien es? Quien es?”

Poe climbed to his feet and took several steps toward the man, telling him not to be alarmed, that they would not hurt him.

“Quien es?” the man asked again as he backed into the doorway and vanished inside.19

In the minute or so since waking Maxwell, Garrett had asked whether Billy the Kid was at Fort Sumner. Agitated, Maxwell had replied that he was not at the fort but was nearby. At that moment, they heard voices outside and saw the man back around the doorframe.

Approaching the bed, the man asked, “Who are those fellows outside, Pete?”

Bolting up in his bed, Maxwell spat out, “That’s him.”

Suddenly aware of the dark shape next to Maxwell, the man sprang back, pointed his pistol, and again demanded, “Quien es? Quien es?”

Garrett was as startled as the intruder. He had not even thought to ready his pistol. Quickly he shifted his holster and at the same instant identified the other man. “He must have then recognized me,” Garrett later conjectured, “for he went backward with a cat-like movement, and I jerked my gun and fired.” The flash of exploding powder blinded Garrett, and he snapped off a second round in the direction of his target. On the verge of pulling the trigger a third time, he heard a groan and knew he had hit his mark.20

Pete Maxwell sprang from his bed and hit the floor in a tangle of bedclothes, then raced for the door. Garrett had already reached the porch when Maxwell tumbled out. A startled Poe and McKinney greeted them with pistols drawn. Poe almost shot Maxwell, who shouted “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot” just as Garrett knocked down Poe’s gun hand. “Don’t shoot Maxwell,” he said.

Hugging the wall outside the door, Garrett gasped, “That was the Kid that came in there onto me, and I think I have got him.”

“Pat,” replied Poe, “the Kid would not come to this place; you have shot the wrong man.”

Garrett paused in doubt, then said, “I am sure that was him, for I know his voice too well to be mistaken.”21

An understandable caution restrained all the men from entering the darkened room to find out who had been shot and whether he was dead. As the Maxwell family and a scattering of townspeople began to gather, Maxwell walked down the porch to his mother’s room and returned with a lighted candle. Placing it on the windowsill, he stepped aside and the lawmen peered in. “We saw a man lying stretched upon his back dead, in the middle of the room,” said Poe, “with a six-shooter lying at his right hand and a butcher-knife at his left.”22

Venturing inside, Garrett and his deputies examined the body that now was unmistakably revealed to be Billy the Kid. Billy bore one bullet wound, in the left breast just above the heart. Garrett’s bullet had killed him almost instantly.

Maxwell was certain that Billy had fired once at Garrett, and Poe and McKinney insisted that they had heard three shots. A thorough search of the room turned up only one stray bullet, in the headboard of Maxwell’s bed. Examining Billy’s pistol, Garrett counted five loaded cartridges; the hammer rested on the empty sixth. The empty shell did not seem to have been fired recently, and since men usually kept an empty shell under the hammer as a safety precaution, it probably had not. The report thought to have been a third shot had been Garrett’s bullet ricocheting from the wall and slamming into Maxwell’s headboard, the lawmen concluded. Billy’s fatal second of hesitation had left the initiative to his opponent.

By now an excited crowd thronged the porch and the old parade ground beyond the fence. As word spread that the Kid had been killed, many vented their grief and anger. A sobbing Celsa Gutierrez cursed Garrett and pounded his chest. Nasaria Yerby, Abrana García, Paulita Maxwell, and the Navajo woman Deluvina Maxwell wept, talked softly, and consoled one another. Armed young men shook their fists and shouted threats at Garrett and his deputies.23 “We spent the remainder of the night on the Maxwell premises,” said Poe, “keeping constantly on our guard, as we were expecting to be attacked by the friends of the dead man.”24

The next morning, at Sunnyside, Milnor Rudulph and his son Charles heard the news and rode down to Fort Sumner. They found the community buzzing with confusion, anger, and controversy. Some wanted to lynch Garrett and his deputies, barricaded in a room of the Maxwell house with their guns ready for a defense. Others argued that Billy’s death relieved the townspeople of a great strain and that the lawmen deserved their gratitude.

Rudulph was a sensible, widely respected, and, of particular importance at the moment, literate man. Justice of the Peace Alejandro Segura asked him to organize a coroner’s jury and preside as foreman. Rudulph assented, assembled five citizens, and convened the proceedings in Pete Maxwell’s bedroom, where the body still lay on the floor. Maxwell and Garrett told their stories. Rudulph then wrote out the report, and the jurors affixed their signatures or made their marks. They duly concluded that William Bonney had met death from a bullet wound in the region of the heart, inflicted by a gun in the hand of Pat F. Garrett. “And our dictum is,” wrote Rudulph in Spanish, “that the act of said Garrett was justifiable homicide and we are of the opinion that the gratitude of the whole community is owed to said Garrett for his deed, and that he deserves to be rewarded.”25

Although many residents would have vigorously dissented had they known of Rudulph’s accolade, one of the jurors who laboriously scratched an X next to his name surely agreed. He was Sabal Gutierrez, husband of Celsa Gutierrez.

The women had asked for the corpse, and after the jury completed its task they had the body carried across the parade ground to the carpenter shop. There, Poe recounted, it “was laid out on a workbench, the women placing lighted candles around it according to their ideas of properly conducting a ‘wake’ for the dead.”26

“Neatly and properly dressed,” according to Garrett, the remains were placed in a coffin, which was borne to the old military cemetery that now served the community. There, on the afternoon of July 15, 1881, Fort Sumner paid final respects to Billy the Kid. Fittingly, he rested next to his old compadres of the Lincoln County War, Tom O’Folliard and Charley Bowdre.

For the two decades remaining to him, Pat Garrett basked in public acclaim as the officer who killed Billy the Kid. The deed took on an almost superhuman glow as the Kid’s reputation blossomed into legend and as he came to be remembered as the frontier’s most exalted outlaw.

Yet, able lawman that he was, Pat Garrett had got his man almost entirely by accident. He and his deputies thought that the fugitive was somewhere in the vicinity, but in trying to find him they encountered nothing but frustration. If the Kid had not blundered into the darkened bedroom at exactly the right moment, Pete Maxwell would have been one more frustration—like Rudulph, nervous but uninformative. Maxwell was their last hope; the next day, they doubtless would have saddled up and ridden back to Roswell.

By the most improbable coincidence of timing, therefore, Billy fell almost literally into Garrett’s lap. To be sure, the sheriff kept his head, reacted with split-second decision, and shot accurately, although in the darkness he ran a great risk of shooting the wrong man. Even so, he triumphed less because of what he did than because of what his opponent failed to do. Billy had the same instant the lawman did in which to recognize his enemy and fire at him. He had his gun in hand, while Garrett’s rested in his holster.

Why did he fail to pull the trigger? Fear of hitting Maxwell? Fear of hitting some unrecognized friend? Garrett himself provided as good an explanation as any: “I think he was surprised and thrown off his guard. Almost any man would have been. Kid was as cool under trying circumstances as any man I ever saw. But he was so surprised and startled, that for a second he could not collect himself. Some men cannot recover their faculties for some time after such a shock. I think Kid would have done so in a second more, if he had had the time.”26

WHAT THEY FOUGHT WITH

Some Frontier Favorites

26. Although percussion weapons had become obsolete by Billy the Kid’s time, many had been re-chambered to fire metallic cartridges. They were reliable, inexpensive, and popular. Originally the cylinder of this 1861 Colt’s Navy, a common Civil War handgun, held six paper cartridges containing powder and ball. When struck by the hammer, a separately affixed cap containing fulminate of mercury ignited the round. In this conversion, the weapon now fires six .38-caliber metallic cartridges. (Photo by Fred Ochs, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas)

Except as noted, photos by Ron Dillow. Technical data from Ken Pate.

27. In the late 1870s the Winchester ’73 gradually overcame the prejudices of westerners against repeaters and the feelings of some, chiefly buffalo hunters, that it was underpowered. By the 1880s, accuracy, rapidity of fire, and ease of handling made the Winchester the characteristic shoulder arm of the frontier. The rifle (left) held fifteen .44-.40 center-fire cartridges in the magazine beneath the barrel, the carbine (right) held twelve. The lever beneath the stock chambered each round preparatory to firing. Billy the Kid was rarely separated from his Winchester.

28. In the favor of westerners, no handgun came close to Colt’s six-shooter. Simple, sturdy, functional, easily handled and repaired, the Colt’s won a large and loyal following in the West. Introduced in 1873, the single-action Colt’s Army (above) gradually overshadowed all other sidearms in the U.S. military service and, as the “Peacemaker,” achieved instant popularity with civilians. The 1873 model came with a 7½-inch barrel and fired a .45-caliber center-fire cartridge. Later, Colt offered a .44-caliber version and a choice of two shorter barrels, 5½ inches and 4¾ inches. Still another version, the double-action “self-cocker,” found favor with many, including Billy the Kid. With the single-action, cocking the hammer rotated the cylinder and positioned a fresh round for firing. With the double-action, pulling the trigger advanced the cylinder and fired the round in one motion. The double-action came in two models, the .38-caliber “Lightning” (below) and the .41-caliber “Thunderer.” The Kid carried the latter.

29. Designed for hunting, shotguns could also be used against humans, as they frequently were in the West. At close range, they did a lot of damage, and they did not have to be aimed. Escaping from confinement in Lincoln, Billy the Kid shot down Bob Olinger with his own 10-gauge Whitney. This is a Greener, available in 10- or 12-gauge, with which Wells Fargo equipped its stagecoach guards.

30. Buffalo hunters favored the durable, hard-hitting Sharps shoulder arm, which delivered maximum power at maximum range. The Sharps was single shot and, unlike the repeaters, could take cartridges of varying lengths and, thus, varying loads of powder. The Sharps Model 1874 sporting rifle (left) came in chamberings of .40, .44, .45, and .50 caliber, with charges ranging from 50 to 150 grains of black powder. Before the advent of the 1873 Springfield, the Sharps carbine (right) was a common cavalry arm. This Model 1863 percussion breechloader has been re-chambered to receive a .50-.70 metallic cartridge.

31. The U.S. Model 1873 Springfield “Trapdoor” served the U.S. Army for two decades. A hinged “trapdoor” in front of the hammer lifted to expose the chamber, which received a single .45-.70-caliber round. Infantry carried the rifle (left), cavalry the carbine (right). Colonel Dudley’s command was armed with these weapons when he marched into Lincoln on July 19, 1878. Many promptly found their way into civilian hands. Buckshot Roberts used Dr. Blazer’s Springfield rifle to kill Dick Brewer.