NOTES
1. THE KID
1. Among students of Billy’s roots, the pioneers are Philip J. Rasch and Robert N. Mullin, who, despite the demands of professions unrelated to history, devoted their lifetimes to the pursuit. Mullin is now dead, but his collection of historical materials may be consulted at the Haley History Center in Midland, Texas (hereafter HHC). Rasch, who resides in California, donated his collection to the Lincoln State Monument in Lincoln, New Mexico. Pertinent here are Rasch and Mullin, “New Light on the Legend of Billy the Kid,” New Mexico Folklore Record 7 (1952–53): 1–5; Rasch and Mullin, “Dim Trails: The Pursuit of the McCarty Family,” ibid. 8 (1954): 6–11; and Mullin, The Boyhood of Billy the Kid, Southwestern Studies Monograph No. 17 (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1967): 7–10.
The Antrim-McCarty marriage is listed in the Santa Fe County Book of Marriages, A, and in the church’s record book of marriages performed by Reverend McFarland. Photocopies are in the Research Files, Mullin Collection, HHC. Henry and “Josie” McCarty are named as witnesses, together with members of the McFarland family.
2. The astute and tenacious researcher who succeeded in connecting Indianapolis with Santa Fe via Kansas is Waldo Koop, Billy the Kid: Trail of a Kansas Legend (Kansas City: Kansas City Westerners, 1965). Important in this process was the work of Philip J. Rasch in tracking stepfather William Antrim and brother Joseph Antrim. See Rasch’s “A Man Named Antrim,” Los Angeles Westerners Brand Book 6 (1956): 48–54, and “The Quest for Joseph Antrim,” NOLA Quarterly 6 (July 1981): 13–17.
3. The former theory is best set forth by Jack DeMattos, “The Search for Billy the Kid’s Roots—Is Over!” Real West 23 (January 1980): 20–25. The latter theory is advanced in Donald Cline, Alias Billy the Kid: The Man Behind the Legend (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1986), chapter 1. The problem is complicated by the sloppy record keeping of the times and by the superabundance, in New York and all other cities, of McCartys, McCarthys, and McCartneys named Patrick, Michael, Henry, Joseph, and Catherine. As a further complication, Billy’s use of the alias of William H. Bonney has sent trackers in pursuit of all the Bonneys who ever immigrated from Ireland. No theory yet advanced is without its holes, although advocates can plug most of them with arguments. Rather than convince, however, the arguments usually lead to more arguments. Students interested in following the esoterica of this immensely complex and unyielding puzzle will be rewarded by the works cited in these footnotes.
The date usually given for Billy’s birth is November 23, 1859. It first appeared in a book that will be cited frequently in the following pages, both to deny its assertions and to serve as a source for my assertions. This book is Pat F. Garrett, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (Santa Fe: New Mexico Printing and Publishing Co., 1882). The history and significance of this book will be treated in chapter 18, but its prominent place in my notes requires a brief introduction here. Although Garrett is credited as author, much of the book was written by Marshall Ashmun Upson, a wandering journalist who was Roswell postmaster at the time of the Lincoln County War. Upson wrote the first fifteen chapters, Garrett the final eight. Upson’s contributions are mostly (but not exclusively) sensationalist fabrications. Garrett’s are excellent firsthand sources. Since generations of subsequent writers turned to Upson-Garrett for their facts, the Upson fantasies have become embedded in the literature of Billy the Kid. Any authentic life of the Kid, therefore, must confront, step by step as it unfolds, the Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. I have done this in my notes.
The original edition of the Authentic Life, of course, is exceedingly scarce and commands a high price. There have been several subsequent editions, of which the most notable are one by the Macmillan Company, edited by Maurice G. Fulton (1927), and one by the University of Oklahoma Press, edited by Jeff C. Dykes (1954). The latter, now in its twelfth printing, is still available. Wherever the Authentic Life is cited in my notes, I have used the Dykes edition. The introductions of Fulton and of Dykes contain much of value relating to the book and its authors, with Dykes’s being the more informative and authoritative.
4. Koop, Billy the Kid, 7–12. Koop unearthed the land records and newspaper items that documented the Antrim-McCarty stay in Wichita, shedding light on the past and present relationship of the two.
5. The Colorado connection appears in Garrett, Authentic Life, 7. Also, Billy himself mentioned a brief residence in Denver to Frank Coe: El Paso Times, September 16, 1923. Finally, an old man generally believed to have been Billy’s brother, Joe, surfaced in Denver in 1928, and he said the family had lived for a time in Denver: Denver Post, April 1, 1928.
6. The code is excellently treated in two books by C. L. Sonnichsen: “I’ll Die Before I’ll Run”: The Story of the Great Feuds of Texas (New York: Devin-Adair, 1962) and Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West, 2d ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1980). The theme is prevalent throughout the historical literature of Texas and New Mexico.
7. Arizona Weekly Star (Tucson), November 11, 1880.
8. Quoted in Conrad Keeler Naegle, “Silver City, New Mexico’s Frontier Paradox, 1870–1890” (MS, Santa Fe, n.d.), 15.
9. Quoted in Mullin, Boyhood of Billy the Kid, 10.
10. Mrs. Patience Glennon of Silver City, quoting her mother, English-woman Mary Richards, to Robert N. Mullin, May 15, 1952, quoted in ibid., 12. See also The Southwesterner (Columbus, N. Mex.), June 1962.
11. Silver City Enterprise, September 18, 1874; Mining Life (Silver City, N. Mex.), September 19, 1874.
12. Anthony B. Connor, interview in Independent (Silver City, N. Mex.), March 22, 1932. See also Connor to Maurice G. Fulton, April 29 and June 22, 1932, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC.
13. Chauncey O. Truesdell, interview with Robert N. Mullin, Phoenix, Ariz., January 9, 1952, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC. For another Truesdell interview, see Roscoe G. Wilson, “Billy the Kid’s Youth is Topic for Argument,” Arizona Republic, December 30, 1951.
14. Recollections of Henry Whitehill, in Notes by Mrs. Helen Wheaton, Silver City, from Gilbert Cureton Collection, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC.
15. Connor, Independent, March 22, 1932.
16. Harvey C. Whitehill, interview in Silver City Enterprise, January 3, 1902.
17. Louis Abraham, in Notes by Mrs. Helen Wheaton, Silver City, from Gilbert Cureton Collection, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC.
18. Whitehill, Mullin Collection, HHC.
19. Truesdell, January 9, 1952, Mullin Collection, HHC. Truesdell remembered that Henry did not even participate in the theft but hid the loot at Shaffer’s request, which is also implied by the newspaper item quoted below.
20. Connor, Independent, March 22, 1932.
21. Whitehill, Mullin Collection, HHC.
22. Silver City Enterprise, January 3, 1902.
23. Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), September 26, 1875.
2. THE ADOLESCENT
1. Ash Upson crowded the first five chapters of the Authentic Life with wild tales of Billy’s adventures. They are unbelievable and without any confirming evidence. All may be confidently tossed on the trash heap of fable.
A widely credited explanation of Billy’s activities in these two years was a long account given to a newspaper reporter by Thomas Dwyer, a New York policeman, shortly after the Kid’s death. Dwyer was certain that New Mexico’s celebrated bandit was Michael McCarty, a juvenile delinquent well known to the officers of the Oak Street Station. McCarty had disappeared in September 1876 after stabbing a friend to death in a drunken brawl. The Dwyer story illustrated a tendency that would become increasingly common with the passing years. Oldtimers remembered all manner of thrilling exploits by a nameless young fellow who they later decided must have been Billy the Kid.
The Dwyer account, in the New York Sun, July 22, 1881, is the cornerstone of Donald Cline’s reconstruction not only of the two-year void but also of the Kid’s family origins. Alias Billy the Kid: The Man Behind the Legend (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1987), 14–21, 37–41. It requires us to throw out the Kid’s connections with Kansas and Indiana altogether and to believe that he fled from Silver City to New York rather than to Arizona. The brutal knifing described by Dwyer did occur, as documented by newspaper accounts reproduced by Cline. But to accept Michael McCarty as Henry Antrim badly strains logic, plausibility, reasonably well-established facts, and the evidence itself.
2. For much of the contents of this chapter I am indebted to Jerry Weddle of Tucson, Arizona, whose diligent researches into the Kid’s Arizona years give promise of important results. Although Weddle will soon publish a book setting forth his findings, he has generously allowed me to make use of them. Employment records of the Hooker ranch establish Antrim’s connection with Hooker but at this writing remain unavailable to researchers.
3. According to Jerry Weddle, citing personal communications with the Hooker and the Whelan families.
4. There are three short reminiscences by Wood, the first in 1911 and the others in the 1920s. Each contains details lacking in the others, but all three are internally consistent. These have generously been made available by Jerry Weddle.
5. John Mackie’s background appears in two pension applications, in 1911 and 1912, unearthed by Jerry Weddle and made available to me. The shooting is recounted in Arizona Weekly Citizen (Tucson), September 25 and October 9, 1875.
6. Miles L. Wood reminiscences, courtesy of Jerry Weddle.
7. The complaint, February 16, 1877, details the circumstances of the theft. The Fort Grant post returns, November 1876, document Lewis Hartman’s pursuit of the thieves. Both documents were provided by Jerry Weddle. The apprehension of Antrim by the soldiers near Globe was related by storekeeper Pat Shanley and appears in Clara T. Woody and Milton L. Schwartz, Globe, Arizona (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1977), 31.
8. Miles L. Wood reminiscences. Wood’s formal request to put the two in the post guardhouse, March 25, 1877, is in the Camp Grant Letters Received (hereafter LR), Record Group (hereafter RG) 98, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NARA). Both documents are courtesy of Jerry Weddle.
9. Miles L. Wood reminiscences, courtesy of Jerry Weddle.
10. J. Fred Denton, “Billy the Kid’s Friend Tells for First Time of Thrilling Incidents,” Tucson Daily Citizen, March 28, 1931.
11. Ibid.
12. Arizona Weekly Star (Tucson), August 23, 1877; Arizona Citizen (Tucson), August 25, 1877.
13. Major C. E. Compton to U.S. Deputy Marshal W. J. Osborn, August 23, 1877, reproduced in Cline, Alias Billy the Kid, 51.
14. Independent (Silver City, N. Mex.), March 22, 1932.
15. The following is according to Ash Upson in Garrett, Authentic Life, 6, 8–9, 22–24. Although Upson’s tales of Henry’s escapades during this period are bogus, his description and characterization of the seventeen-year-old who reappeared in 1877 stem from personal acquaintance and find confirmation in the testimony of others who knew the boy.
3. THE OUTLAW
1. A solid history of Lincoln County is John P. Wilson, Merchants, Guns & Money: The Story of Lincoln County and Its Wars (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987).
2. Robert M. Utley, High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), chapter 2.
3. Las Vegas Gazette, November 25, 1875, quoted in William A. Keleher, The Fabulous Frontier: Twelve New Mexico Items (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962), 60.
4. Philip J. Rasch, “The Pecos War,” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 29 (1956): 101–11. For Chisum, see Harwood P. Hinton, “John Simpson Chisum, 1877–84,” New Mexico Historical Review 31 (July 1956): 177–205; 31 (October 1956): 310–37; 32 (January 1957): 53–65.
5. Upson’s role in Kid historiography is discussed in chapter 18. See also note 1 in chapter 2. Upson describes Roswell and its founder in a long letter to his father: Roswell, August 30, 1876, Fulton Collection, Box 11, Folder 6, Special Collections, University of Arizona Library, Tucson (hereafter UAL).
6. Quoted in Milton W. Callon, Las Vegas, New Mexico. . . The Town That Wouldn’t Gamble (Las Vegas: Las Vegas Daily Optic, 1962), 116–17. See also Lynn W. Perrigo, Gateway to Glorieta: The History of Las Vegas, New Mexico (Boulder, Colo.: Pruett Press, 1982).
7. James D. Shinkle, Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo Indian Reservation (Roswell, N. Mex.: Hall-Pourbough Press, 1965), 77–81; William A. Keleher, The Maxwell Land Grant: A New Mexico Item (Santa Fe: Rydal Press, 1942), 36–37.
8. Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877. Carpenter’s identification furnishes the only known documentation for the Kid’s whereabouts before he turned up on the Pecos River about two weeks later. If Carpenter named the wrong man, we do not know where the Kid was or what he did in the weeks following the killing of Cahill unless we credit the wild tale concocted by Ash Upson for Garrett’s Authentic Life, which I am unwilling to do. Robert N. Mullin (The Boyhood of Billy the Kid [El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1967]: 18–19) does not think the Kid rode with the Evans gang during this period or any other. I do, for these reasons: (1) the Carpenter identification; (2) evidence cited below tying the Kid closely to Evans’s known whereabouts; (3) evidence cited in the next chapter making it plain that the Kid and Evans knew each other with considerable intimacy at the time of John H. Tunstall’s death three months later. There is no other time when the relationship could have taken root. Evans, Baker, and others of the bunch that stole the horses at Pass Coal Camp are named in the Independent, October 6, 1877.
9. Mesilla Valley Independent, July 21, 1877. For Evans, see Grady E. McCright and James H. Powell, Jessie Evans: Lincoln County Badman (College Station, Texas: Creative Publishing Co., 1983); and Philip J. Rasch, “The Story of Jessie J. Evans,” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 33 (1960): 108–21. For Kinney, see Philip J. Rasch, “John Kinney: King of the Rustlers,” English Westerners Brand Book 4 (October 1961): 10–12; Jack DeMattos, “John Kinney,” Real West 27 (February 1984): 20–25; and Robert N. Mullin, “Here Lies John Kinney,” Journal of Arizona History 14 (Autumn 1973): 223–42.
10. Quoted in Philip J. Rasch, “Death at the Baile,” Potomac Westerners Corral Dust 6 (August 1961): 30. See also Rasch and DeMattos, “John Kinney.”
11. Rasch, “Story of Jessie J. Evans,” 109.
12. A. B. Connor to Maurice G. Fulton, April 29, 1932, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC: “The school kids used to call him Bonney, but why I don’t know.”
13. As conceded in n. 8, the only documentary evidence that places Billy with the Evans gang at this time is Carpenter’s identification of him as one of the Pass Coal Camp thieves. But when Evans was on the lower Pecos in late October, so was Billy; and when Evans was in jail in Lincoln in November, Billy was nearby and, as we shall see, helped him escape from jail. I think it highly likely, therefore, that Billy rode across the mountains with the Evans gang and shared their adventures. The following account of those adventures is drawn from various news items in the Mesilla Valley Independent, October 6 and 13, 1877.
The usual version of Billy’s journey to the Pecos is, of course, Upson’s in Garrett, Authentic Life, 36–44. In this tale, the Kid, with friend Tom O’Keefe, takes a direct route across the Sacramento and Guadalupe mountains, endures terrible hardships, engages in some fantastic Indian combats, loses his mount and becomes separated from his buddy, and finally lands, exhausted and footsore, at the Jones ranch near Seven Rivers. This story resembles all the other sensations that Upson’s creative pen attributed to Billy’s early life and cannot be taken any more seriously than the others. Tom O’Keefe is otherwise unknown to history.
14. Mesilla Valley Independent, October 6, 1877.
15. Ibid.
16. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., August 14, 1927, HHC.
17. I have dealt with the Murphy-Dolan establishment, known as “The House,” in greater depth in High Noon in Lincoln. For the connection between The House and The Boys, see pp. 29, 32–33. The “Fence Rail” letter appears in the Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877, along with a detailed account of the progress of The Boys from the Rio Grande to the summit above the Indian agency. The economics of federal beef contracts are authoritatively probed in Wilson, Merchants, Guns & Money, 58–60.
18. Philip J. Rasch and Lee Myers, “The Tragedy of the Beckwiths,” English Westerners Brand Book 5 (July 1963): 1–6.
19. Eve Ball, Ma’am Jones of the Pecos (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1969), tells the story of the Jones family. For the historian imbued with proper skepticism, this book poses a dilemma. On the one hand, Eve Ball obtained the story from the Jones boys (mostly Sam) in the 1940s and 1950s, and their recollections must be taken seriously. On the other hand, the story is presented in grossly romanticized fashion replete with contrived conversation. Separating the Jones boys and Eve Ball is impossible. I have used the book for color and characterizations, but not for events unless supported in other sources.
Billy Bonney’s arrival at the Jones ranch in October 1877, related in Ball’s chapter 17, is a case in point. Billy’s presence there at this time is confirmed in other sources, notably the recollections of Lily Casey and her brother Robert, cited below, and I believe that he was in fact there. But the account of his arrival, presented chiefly in theatrical dialogue, strains credulity. He arrives horseless, broken-down, and with almost useless feet after the perilous crossing of the Guadalupe Mountains described so breathtakingly by Upson in Garrett’s Authentic Life. Ever since the first appearance of the Jones-Ball version (Eve Ball, “Billy Strikes the Pecos,” New Mexico Folklore Record 4 [1949–50]: 7–10), students have regarded it as substantiation of the Upson yarn. It seems more likely to me that the Upson account, published in 1882, colored the Joneses’ memory of Billy’s stay at the ranch. For her rendering of the story, Ball cites “almost identical accounts” of Bill, Sam, Frank, and Nib Jones. In 1877 these brothers were, respectively, fourteen, eight, six, and five years old. Given the mysterious workings of memory, one may easily reject this version without regarding the Joneses or Eve Ball as dishonest. The birth dates of all the Joneses are recorded in the family Bible; a copy is in the New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC.
20. Mesilla Valley Independent, September 22 and October 27, 1877; Frederick W. Nolan, ed., The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), 243–44. I have dealt with these events in High Noon in Lincoln, 333–34.
21. Tunstall’s acquisition of the Casey cattle and the beginnings of his ranch on the Feliz are detailed in Utley, High Noon in Lincoln, 27.
22. Adherents of the Upson-Jones-Ball story may wonder where Billy, horseless after his ordeal in the Guadalupes, acquired or stole a horse so quickly after his arrival at the Jones ranch.
23. Lily (Casey) Klasner, My Girlhood among Outlaws, ed. Eve Ball (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972), 169–70. Lily Casey Klasner is a more reassuring historical source than the Jones brothers, and the student wishes that Eve Ball had been able to do as well by them as she did by Lily. Where susceptible to corroboration in other sources, Lily turns out to be unusually reliable. In addition, her memory of various personalities is acute, and she is indispensable in aiding the historian to get a feel for them as people rather than mere names. With Lily and the Joneses placing Billy here at this time, and Add remembering him here too (see n. 24), we may feel confident that Billy was indeed at the Jones ranch.
24. Ibid., 174; Robert A. Casey, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Picacho, N. Mex., June 25, 1937, HHC.
25. Not surprisingly, Lily says nothing about Tunstall’s cows or their recovery by Brewer. Tunstall, however, describes the episode in detail in a letter to his parents of November 29, 1877, in Nolan, ed., Life and Death of Tunstall, 248–49. See also Florencio Chavez, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Lincoln, N. Mex., August 15, 1927, HHC. Chavez was one of Brewer’s men. The Brewer mission, undertaken on October 20 or 21 and probably completed within ten days, allows us to place almost exact dates on the Caseys’ stay at the Jones ranch and thus on Billy Bonney’s presence there, which in turn ties in nicely with the documented presence of Evans and his henchmen at the nearby Beckwith ranch. In both the Casey and the Jones accounts, the time is vague.
26. Lily Casey Klasner placed Billy in Lincoln: My Girlhood among Outlaws, 174. So did Florencio Chavez: “I knew the Kid from the first time he first came to Lincoln with Jesse Evans, Frank Baker, . . . ” (italics mine), as quoted in Eugene Cunningham, “Fought with Billy the Kid,” Frontier Times 9 (March 1932): 244. And so did Francisco Trujillo, who later rode with the Kid, as cited below in n. 27.
Billy’s movements at this time are thinly documented. A few scattered scraps of evidence hint that he may have been arrested at Seven Rivers or Roswell for some offense and confined in the Lincoln jail himself. Released for want of evidence, possibly with the aid of Tunstall, he then went to work for Tunstall. The evidence behind this theory is not persuasive enough to warrant my substituting it for the account I present in the following paragraphs.
27. Francisco Trujillo, interview with Edith L. Crawford, San Patricio, N. Mex., May 10, 1937, translated by A. L. White, WPA Files, Folder 212, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives (hereafter NMSRCA), and printed in Robert F. Kadlec, ed., They “Knew” Billy the Kid: Interviews with Old-Time New Mexicans (Santa Fe: Ancient City Press, 1987), 68. Trujillo later rode with Bonney in the Lincoln County War and knew him well. At first glance, this interview seems the incoherent rambling of a senile old man. Once the phonetically rendered names are accurately translated, however, and the framework of his narrative substantiated from other sources, the result is an important tool in reconstructing some key aspects of the Lincoln County War. Trujillo’s narrative of his encounter with Billy Bonney finds corroboration in a letter from Lincoln dated December 3, 1877, that appeared in the Mesilla Valley Independent, December 15, 1877: “On their way to the Feliz, they met Juan Trujillo, and borrowed his saddle, gun and pistol for Don Lucas Gallegos.” (Italics mine.) Gallegos, not part of the Evans gang, was the fifth prisoner liberated.
28. I have dealt with the escape in more detail in High Noon in Lincoln, 34–35 and notes. Each faction accused the other of aiding the escape, and the exact truth cannot be recovered. Principal sources are Tunstall’s account in Nolan, ed., Life and Death of Tunstall, 253–56; Mesilla Valley Independent, November 24 and December 13, 1877; and depositions of Alexander McSween and Juan Patrón, in Frank Warner Angel, “Report on the Death of John H. Tunstall,” File 44–4–8–3, RG 60, Records of the Department of Justice, NARA (hereafter cited as Angel Report). The case against Tunstall is best stated in “Cowboy” to Ed., Rio Pecos, April 8, 1878, Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), April 20, 1878; and the case against Dolan is best stated in McSween to Ed., Lincoln, April 27, 1878, which appeared in the Cimarron News and Press and is reproduced in Maurice G. Fulton, History of the Lincoln County War, ed. Robert N. Mullin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), 189–92. Both Evans and Andrew Boyle, soon to become prominent in the anti-McSween forces, implicated McSween in the escape: Depositions of Evans and Boyle, Report of Inspector E. C. Watkins, Report no. 1981, June 27, 1878, RG 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Inspectors’ Reports, 1873–80, NARA (hereafter Watkins Report). This report concerns allegations made by McSween of fraudulent relations between Indian Agent Frederick C. Godfroy and Dolan & Co. Godfroy lost his job as a result.
4. THE RANCH HAND
1. George Coe wrote a book that has become a minor classic: Frontier Fighter: The Autobiography of George W. Coe, as related to Nan Hillary Harrison (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1934; 2d ed., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1951; Lakeside Classics ed., ed. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Co., 1984). The book suffered from the intervention of Harrison and is of limited value as source material. Far more valuable are interviews with both Frank and George conducted by J. Evetts Haley in the 1920s and 1930s, the notes and transcripts of which are now housed in the Haley History Center in Midland, Texas. Both also contributed articles and letters to newspapers. Frank and George had a poor memory for chronology, but they provide excellent local color and characterizations and good detail for certain events.
2. Frank Coe, “A Friend Comes to the Defense of Notorious Billy the Kid,” El Paso Times, September 16, 1923.
3. Ibid.
4. William Chisum, interview with Allen A. Erwin, Los Angeles, 1952, Arizona Historical Society, Tucson (hereafter AHS). This source consists of a dozen tapes recorded by Erwin in a series of conversations in Chisum’s Los Angeles home during August and September 1952. The son of James Chisum, Will was a nephew of John Simpson Chisum, for whom he worked at the South Spring ranch near Roswell beginning in December 1877. For frontier firearms in general, and Billy’s in particular, see Louis A. Garavaglia and Charles G. Worman, Firearms of the American West, 1866–1894 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985).
5. Coe, Frontier Fighter, 49. I have used the Lakeside Classics edition.
6. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., March 20, 1927, HHC.
7. William Wier, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Monument, N. Mex., June 22, 1937, Barker History Center, University of Texas. For a biographical sketch of Scurlock, see Philip J. Rasch, Joseph E. Buckbee, and Karl K. Klein, “Man of Many Parts,” English Westerners Brand Book 5 (January 1963): 9–12.
8. Coe, Frontier Fighter, 50. Quotation from Frank Coe, interviews with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., March 20, 1927, and February 20, 1928, HHC. The latter interview is penciled jottings on slips of paper and apparently was never transcribed and edited.
9. Frederick W. Nolan, ed., The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), 213.
10. Sue (McSween) Barber, interview with J. Evetts Haley, White Oaks, N. Mex., August 16, 1927, HHC.
11. Nolan, ed., Life and Death of Tunstall, 259.
12. Ibid., 249; New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC.
13. Frank Coe, February 20, 1928, HHC; deposition of Henry Brown, Angel Report, NARA; New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC. Because of his later notoriety in Kansas, Brown has attracted more attention than other gunmen. Consult the following: Bill O’Neal, Henry Brown, the Outlaw Marshal (College Station, Texas: Creative Publishing Co., 1980); Colin W. Rickards, “Better for the World That He is Gone,” English Westerners Brand Book 2 (April 1960): 2–8; and Philip J. Rasch, “A Note on Henry Newton Brown,” Los Angeles Westerners Brand Book 5 (1953): 58–67. I cannot be sure that Brown worked for Tunstall. The above publications have him hiring on with John Chisum after the break with The House in December 1877. By his own testimony, however, as well as that of Godfrey Gauss, William Bonney, Jacob B. Mathews, and John Hurley (Angel Report, NARA), Brown was at the Tunstall ranch on February 13–18, 1878, at the time of the attachment proceedings that led to Tunstall’s death, treated below. His deposition does not indicate whom he worked for after leaving Murphy, but his presence at the Tunstall ranch and his subsequent career as one of the Regulators lead me to think that he went to work for Tunstall at about the same time as Bonney. In any event, these associations seem inconsistent with employment on the Chisum ranch, more than fifty miles to the east.
14. Frank Coe, February 20, 1928, HHC; New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC. The latter consist mainly of some useful correspondence Maurice G. Fulton conducted with people who knew Waite in Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma.
15. Carlota Baca Brent, interview with Frances E. Totty, December 6, 1937, WPA Files, Folder 212, NMSRCA.
16. Deposition of Andrew Boyle, June 17, 1878, Watkins Report, NARA.
17. Depositions of William H. Bonney and Robert A. Widenmann, Angel Report, NARA.
18. Robert A. Casey, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Picacho, N. Mex., June 25, 1937, HHC.
19. I have dealt with these events in greater detail in High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 38–43.
20. Deposition of Robert A. Widenmann, Angel Report, NARA; Brady to Rynerson, March 5, 1878, in Mesilla Valley Independent, March 30, 1878. The inventories are in Lincoln County, District Court, Docket Book F, NMSRCA.
21. Nolan, ed., Life and Death of Tunstall, 252; depositions of Bonney, Widenmann, and James Longwell (a posseman in the store), Angel Report, NARA.
22. Depositions of Widenmann, Bonney, Mathews, and Hurley, Angel Report, NARA. The sources also mention one McCormick, who is otherwise unidentified.
23. Depositions of Gauss and Bonney, Angel Report, NARA. According to Gauss, “It was reported by Alex Rudder that the posse was agoing to kill us.” Since Gauss later says that Brewer sent Rudder on to the Peñasco to get a load of corn, I assume Rudder (known locally as “Crazy Alex”) gave this information at the ranch rather than in Lincoln. Bonney says, “Having been informed that said deputy sheriff and posse were going to round up all the cattle and drive them off and kill the persons at the ranch, the persons at the ranch cut portholes in the walls of the house and filled sacks with earth so that they. . . could defend themselves.” Widenmann also tells of these defensive measures, and they were noted by a member of the second posse on February 18: depositions of Widenmann and Pantaleón Gallegos, Angel Report, NARA.
24. Deposition of Mathews, Angel Report, NARA.
25. The Mimbres raid is reported in the Mesilla Valley Independent, January 26, 1878. The meeting with Dolan is covered in the deposition of Dolan, Angel Report, NARA. The Dolan and the McSween-Tunstall parties met at Shedd’s Ranch in San Augustín Pass east of Mesilla. With Evans looking on, Dolan tried to provoke Tunstall into a shootout, but the Englishman refused to go for his gun.
26. Depositions of Mathews and Hurley, Angel Report, NARA. Evans’s explanation may have been genuine, or it may have been a screen for other purposes. As will become apparent, Billy did have a spare horse, and it could have been borrowed from Evans. In any event, the explanation, whether truthful or not, establishes a prior relationship between the two that could have occurred only since the killing of Cahill. As suggested in chapter 3, I believe that Bonney rode with the Evans gang in October and helped spring Evans from the Lincoln jail in November. Mathews identifies Evans’s companion at Blazer’s Mills as Rivers rather than Hill. Hurley names Hill. Because Evans and Hill were especially close, I favor Hurley’s memory. In any event, all four were present at Paul’s ranch.
27. Those present who later gave depositions for the Angel Report were Mathews, Hurley, Middleton, Widenmann, Bonney, and Gauss. Brown’s deposition dealt only with the events of February 18.
28. Depositions of Widenmann, Bonney, and Gauss, Angel Report, NARA. Evans, Baker, Hill, and two others had been indicted for larceny by a federal grand jury on November 21, 1877; this was the basis for the warrant Widenmann carried. U.S. District Court, Third Judicial District, Record Book, 1871–79, pp. 659 and 663, RG 21, Records of the District Court of the United States, Territory of New Mexico, NARA, Denver Federal Records Center (hereafter DFRG).
29. In his Angel Report deposition, McSween, whose dates were usually imprecise, says that Widenmann came in “on or about” February 14 and that Tunstall had already decided not to fight. Because Tunstall was still behaving belligerently three days later, however, I infer a similar attitude in the meeting on the night of February 13.
30. For the organization and movement of the expanded posse, see depositions of Mathews, Hurley, Gallegos, and Samuel R. Perry, Angel Report, NARA. The Lincoln possemen were Mathews, Hurley, Gallegos, George Hindman, Andrew Roberts, Manuel Segovia, Alexander Hamilton Mills, Thomas Moore, Ramón Montoya, E. H. Wakefield, Felipe Mes, and Pablo Pino y Pino. From Seven Rivers were Billy Morton, Perry, Charles Wolz, Charles Kruling, Charles Marshall, John Wallace Olinger, Robert W. Beckwith, Thomas Green, Thomas Cochran, and George Kitt.
31. Depositions of Longwell and McSween, Angel Report, NARA.
32. Depositions of McSween, Widenmann, Bonney, Middleton, and Gauss, Angel Report, NARA.
33. The scene at the ranch is described in the depositions of Dolan, Mathews, Gauss, Gallegos, Perry, and Kruling, Angel Report, NARA. Perry and Gallegos tell of the exchange with Evans. The Morton quotation is from Gauss. The subposse consisted of Morton, Gallegos, Perry, Kruling, Hurley, Segovia (“Indian”), Hindman, Olinger, Beckwith, Montoya, Green, Cochran, Kitt, and Marshall. Perry and Dolan both mention meeting Henry Brown on the approach from the Peñasco, and Brown’s deposition also describes the meeting. Perry notes that Bonney had a horse of Evans’s, whereas all the rest refer to more than one.
34. The experiences of the Tunstall party are reconstructed from the depositions of Widenmann, Middleton, and Bonney, Angel Report, NARA; from an undated Widenmann draft on stationery of Tunstall’s Lincoln County Bank, HHC; and from Widenmann’s testimony before Judge Bristol as reported in the Mesilla News, July 6,1878.
35. Deposition of Middleton, Angel Report, NARA.
36. The experiences of Morton’s subposse are reconstructed from the depositions of Perry, Cochran, Beckwith, Olinger, Gallegos, Hurley, and Kruling, Angel Report, NARA.
37. Evans’s testimony in a hearing before Judge Bristol is reported in the Mesilla News, July 6,1878.
38. Longwell, still holding the Tunstall store next door for Brady, testified that these men had gathered well before word arrived of Tunstall’s death. Therefore, they must have come in response to Tunstall’s daylong ride through the countryside on February 16. Deposition of Longwell, Angel Report, NARA.
5. THE AVENGER
1. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., August 14, 1927, HHC.
2. My reconstruction of the events of February 18–23, based chiefly on depositions in the Angel Report, differs from previous chronologies. I have also dealt with the sequence in High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 52–56 and notes.
3. An affidavit of Middleton, and another of Brewer and Bonney, February 19, 1878, together with an explanatory affidavit of Justice Wilson, August 31, 1878, are Exhibits 10a and 13 appended to McSween’s deposition in the Angel Report, NARA. Middleton’s affidavit named only Hindman. The Brewer-Bonney affidavit named Dolan, Baker, Evans, Davis, Mills, Morton, Moore, Hindman, Frank Rivers (another Evans associate), and Gallegos. Curiously, Wilson issued warrants for the arrest, as a copyist took the names from his docket book the following August, of “John [James] J. Dolan, J. Conovar [Thomas Cochran?], Frank Baker, Jessie Evans, Tom Hill, George Davis, O.[A.] L. Roberts, P. Gallegos, T. Green, J. Awley [John Hurley?], ‘Dutch Charley’ proper name unknown [Kruling], R. W. Beckwith, William Morton, George Harmon [Hindman], J. B. Mathews and others.” Considering Wilson’s execrable handwriting, the confused rendering of the names is understandable. In addition to Dolan, others of those named were at the ranch on the Feliz rather than with the Morton subposse.
4. Exhibit 14 appended to McSween’s deposition in the Angel Report is a certified copy of an entry of February 20, 1878, in Wilson’s docket book, which says that the warrant based on the larceny charge was issued on February 19. Brady’s request for military protection, February 18, is annexed to Purington to Angel, June 25, 1878, in the Angel Report, NARA.
5. Deposition of Longwell, Angel Report, NARA. Longwell’s dating is imprecise. My reconstruction of Billy’s whereabouts leaves this as the only day on which the event could have happened.
6. Deposition of Widenmann, Angel Report, NARA; Widenmann to Purington, February 20 [about 1:00 A.M., according to the deposition], 1878, Angel Report, NARA. U.S. Marshal John Sherman to Colonel Edward Hatch, Santa Fe, December 3,1877; 1st end., Loud to Purington, December 10; 2d end., Purington to Loud, March 14, 1878, RG 393, LR, Hq. District of New Mexico (hereafter DNM), NARA (M1088, roll 30).
7. The rest of the possemen were Tunstall store clerk Sam Corbet, Lincoln’s black handymen George Washington and George Robinson, Josiah G. Scurlock, Frank McNab, Sam Smith, Ygnacio Gonzalez, Jesús Rodriguez, Esequio Sanchez, Roman Barregon, and one Edwards. Since Brady later charged the Martínez posse with riot, the names appear in court records: Lincoln County, District Court Journal, 1875–79, April 1878 term, pp. 264–91, NMSRCA. They are also named in an affidavit of George W. Peppin, sworn before clerk of the district court, April 18, 1878, Fulton Collection, Box 12, Folder 2, UAL. According to Peppin, the deputies in the store were himself, Longwell, John Long, Charles Martin, and John Clark.
8. Depositions of Longwell, Martínez (2), Widenmann (2), and Goodwin; affidavit of Wilson, Exhibit 14 to McSween’s deposition; all in Angel Report, NARA. Longwell’s deposition is the most informative, although he dates the episode February 23, which is contradicted by Wilson’s docket book as well as other evidence.
9. Purington to Acting Assistant Adjutant General (hereafter AAAG) DNM, Fort Stanton, February 21, 1878, encl. to Pope to Assistant Adjutant General (hereafter AAG) Military Division of the Missouri, April 24, 1878, RG 94, Adjutant General’s Office (hereafter AGO) LR (Main Series) 1878–80, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA (M666 Rolls 397 and 398) (hereafter cited as File 1405 AGO 1878); Purington to Bristol, February 21, 1878, RG 393, Post Records, Fort Stanton, N. Mex., Letters Sent (hereafter LS), vol. 18, 1876–78, NARA.
10. Deposition of Goodwin, Angel Report, NARA.
11. Depositions of Goodwin and Widenmann, Angel Report, NARA.
12. Depositions of Martínez, Widenmann, and McSween, Angel Report, NARA.
13. Purington to AAAG DNM, February 21, 1878, File 1405 AGO 1878, and Purington to Bristol, same date, RG 393, Post Records, Fort Stanton, N. Mex., LS, vol. 18, 1876–78, NARA. Deposition of Goodwin, and Purington to Angel, June 25, 1878, Angel Report, NARA.
14. Depositions of Gonzalez and John Newcomb (the fourth member of the group), Angel Report, NARA.
15. Depositions of McSween and Adolph Barrier, Angel Report, NARA. The bond, with Rynerson’s disapproving endorsement, is Exhibit 15 to McSween’s deposition.
16. Affidavit of Wilson, August 31, 1878, attesting to entry in his docket book of February 22, 1878, Exhibit 13 to McSween’s deposition, Angel Report, NARA.
17. The standard authority on vigilantism is Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), pt. 3.
18. New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC.
19. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., February 20, 1928, HHC.
20. New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC.
21. Details of the chase are given in Morton to H. H. Marshall (Richmond, Va.), South Spring River, March 8,1878, printed in Mesilla Valley Independent, April 13, 1878. The story is told in greater detail in Garrett’s Authentic Life, 54–57. Except for the hyperbole and the effort to place Billy at the center of events, I credit this part of the Authentic Life. Ash Upson was Roswell postmaster. He received Morton’s letter, cited above, and talked with him as well as the Regulators. More than anyone else outside the Regulators, he was in a position to know what happened. He identifies Billy as the Regulator who wanted to kill Morton. Upson’s account tallies well with reports that appeared in the Mesilla Valley Independent, March 16, 1878, and the Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 4, 1878, the information for which he himself furnished.
22. Morton to Marshall, as cited in n. 21.
23. William Chisum, interview with Allen A. Erwin, Los Angeles, 1952, AHS.
24. Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 4,1878.
25. Upson to My Dear Niece, Roswell, March 15, 1878, Fulton Collection, Box 11, Folder 4, UAL.
26. Dispatch from Roswell, March 10, 1878, almost certainly written by Upson, Mesilla Valley Independent, March 16, 1878; deposition of McSween, Angel Report, NARA. John Middleton recounted this version in his deposition in the Angel Report, NARA.
27. Depositions of McSween and David P. Shield, Axtell responses to Angel “interrogatories,” and Montague R. Leverson to President Hayes, March 16, 1878, Angel Report, NARA. The proclamation is Exhibit 16 to McSween’s deposition. Widenmann to Ed., March 30, 1878, Cimarron News and Press, April II, 1878. The justice of the peace elected in November 1876 had resigned, and the county commissioners had appointed Wilson, who had been justice in the past, to serve pending another election. Although the appointment was in accord with the 1876 act of the territorial legislature creating county commissions, it contravened the New Mexico organic act, which required justices to be elected and which took precedence. Technically, therefore, Axtell was right. But he himself had sponsored the 1876 law, and his proclamation suggests more of a desire to back Dolan than to uphold the law.
28. Deposition of McSween, Angel Report, NARA.
29. Garrett, Authentic Life, 56.
30. In Garrett, Authentic Life, 55–57, Upson gives a detailed account of this version, derived, he says, from Billy himself and confirmed by “several of his comrades.” In this rendering, McNab killed McCloskey, then all the Regulators pursued the fleeing Morton and Baker, and Billy fired the shots that felled them both. It is possible that Billy told Upson the story, but one must look on this claim with healthy skepticism. At the same time, Upson was close enough to the event to have learned what happened in its essentials, and his report deserves respect.
Florencio Chavez told J. Evetts Haley that he was one of the Regulators, that Henry Brown killed McCloskey, and that the other two fled and were killed as related by Upson: Florencio Chavez, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Lincoln, N. Mex., August 15, 1927, HHC. Upson, in the account in the Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 4,1878, says the bodies bore eleven wounds, one for each Regulator. (He saw the bodies brought into Roswell, according to his letter to his niece cited in n. 25.) Morton, in his letter to Marshall of March 8 (cited in n. 21), names ten Regulators: Brewer, Scurlock, Bonney, Bowdre, Waite, Middleton, Brown, McNab, French, and Smith. The eleventh, if there was an eleventh, could have been Chavez. Given the attitudes of the time and place, a Hispanic among the Regulators might not have registered on Morton or might not have been known to him by name.
Although not claiming to have been present, Francisco Trujillo knew what was going on and talked with Billy in San Patricio immediately afterward. Trujillo’s version also has McCloskey killed first and the other two then executed. Francisco Trujillo, interview with Edith L. Crawford, San Patricio, N. Mex., May 10, 1937, WPA Files, Folder 212, NMSRCA.
31. New Mexico State Tribune (Albuquerque), July 27, 1928.
6. THE ASSASSIN
1. A biography is Donald R. Lavash, William Brady: Tragic Hero of the Lincoln County War (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1987). For his military record, see his enlistment papers, RG 94, Appointments, Commissions, Promotions (ACP) File, NARA, and the pension application of Bonafacia Brady, 555976, August 28, 1892, NARA.
2. Garrett, Authentic Life, 60–61.
3. Of all the participants in that meeting, only Francisco Trujillo left an account: interview with Edith Crawford, San Patricio, N. Mex., May 10, 1937, WPA Files, Folder 212, NMSRCA. The account is chronologically confused and somewhat incoherent, but it unmistakably credits McSween with offering a reward for Brady’s slaying.
As I indicated in chapter 3, n. 27, certain portions of Trujillo’s account ring true and where susceptible to cross-checking are generally supported in other sources. One reminiscent account fifty-nine years after the fact is pretty thin evidence on which to base such a major allegation, however, and so the question must remain open. My own feeling is that McSween at least implied, seriously or not, that Brady’s demise would be welcome, and that the assassins believed they were doing what McSween wanted and, possibly, would pay for.
4. Deposition of McSween, Angel Report, NARA; Montague Leverson to President Hayes, Lincoln, April 2, 1878, in Frederick W. Nolan, ed., The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1965), 308–10.
5. Deposition of McSween, Angel Report, NARA.
6. Taylor F. Ealy, “The Lincoln County War As I Saw It,” MS, c. 1927, Ealy Collection, UAL. There are three versions, each differing slightly from the others. All three, therefore, should be consulted. Portions of the Ealy papers have been published: Norman J. Bender, ed., Missionaries, Outlaws, and Indians: Taylor F. Ealy at Lincoln and Zuni, 1878–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984).
7. Deposition of McSween, Angel Report, NARA; Ealy, “Lincoln County War.” Brady’s purpose in walking down the street draws no less than three explanations, and there is dispute over whether he was walking east or west.
In addition to my explanation, which represents my reading of the evidence, another is that, as a ruse to draw Brady into the trap, Henry Brown staged a drunken disturbance near the Ellis store on the east edge of town (George Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Glencoe, N. Mex., March 20, 1927, HHC; and Juan Peppin, interview with Maurice G. Fulton, c. 1930, Mullin Collection, HHC). Reverend Ealy’s explanation, representing the McSween point of view, was that Brady was on the way to the east end of town to intercept McSween, known to be coming in for court, seize him and throw him in the cellar jail (Ealy, “Lincoln County War”).
Brady’s biographer believes that Brady, coming in from his home east of town, had arranged to meet his deputies at the courthouse, proceed to the Tunstall store to await the arrival of McSween, and there arrest him and once more invoke the writ of attachment. Thus he has the Brady party, not having been at the Dolan store at all that morning, proceeding west on the street (Lavash, Sheriff William Brady, 105–6). Fulton also has Brady walking west, having reached the courthouse and begun the return to the Dolan store (Maurice G. Fulton, History of the Lincoln County War, ed. Robert N. Mullin [Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968], 158–59). Fulton cites no authority. Lavash’s authority is Brady’s grandson, who is thus reflecting family tradition. Ealy, of course, saw the party walking east, but this is not inconsistent with its reaching the courthouse and starting back before the killings. The son of George Peppin, Juan ran to the scene immediately after hearing the firing.
The relationship of the wall and the east face of the store is another reason for believing that Brady was headed west. Walking east, the victims could not be seen until they were opposite the killers; walking west, they could be tracked for some distance before reaching the store.
8. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., March 20, 1927, HHC.
The original writ of attachment has survived: Lincoln County, District Court, Civil Case no. 141, NMSRCA. The writ bears a notation that it was retrieved from the body of Sheriff Brady. The arrest warrant must have been there too, for Deputy Peppin tried to serve it on McSween later in the day.
The basic facts of the Brady killing are set forth in the Mesilla Valley Independent, April 13 and 27 and May 4,1878, and in the Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 4, 1878. Reminiscent accounts are Robert Brady (the sheriff’s young son), interview with Edith L. Crawford, Carrizozo, N. Mex., c. 1937; Gorgonio Wilson (son of Justice Wilson), interview with Edith L. Crawford, Roswell, N. Mex., 1938; and Carlota Baca Brent (daughter of Saturnino Baca), interview with Frances E. Totty, December 6, 1937; all in WPA Files, Folder 212, NMSRCA. These also appear in Robert F. Kadlec, ed., They “Knew” Billy the Kid: Interviews with Old-Time New Mexicans (Santa Fe: Ancient City Press, 1987). See also Ealy, “Lincoln County War.”
9. Carlota Baca Brent, December 6,1937, NMSRCA.
10. Ealy, “Lincoln County War.” Most accounts identify Billy’s companion in the bolt to Brady’s body as Fred Waite and the man treated by Ealy as Billy himself. In the passage here quoted, Ealy does not name the man he treated. But in another of his three versions of this manuscript he does name French. In addition, Mary Ealy later declared that French “was pretty badly wounded and the Dr. dressed his wounds.” Mary R. Ealy to Maurice G. Fulton, January 16, 1928, Fulton Collection, Box 1, Folder 8, UAL. Frank Coe agrees: “Someone—Mathews said he did it—shot the Kid just above the hip, and the same bullet went through French’s leg. Kid and his crowd rode out of town, but French could not run.” Frank Coe, March 20, 1927, HHC.
11. Ealy, “Lincoln County War.”
12. Ibid. Frank Coe says Corbet put French and the two pistols in the basement of the Tunstall store and dragged a carpet over the trapdoor. Frank Coe, March 20, 1927, HHC. The Tunstall store did not have a cellar either, but it had enough space between floor and ground for French to have hidden. Since Corbet had clerked in the Tunstall store and knew it well, and since the search centered on the McSween house, I favor the store.
13. The events of the afternoon of April 1 are treated in more detail in Robert M. Utley, High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 62–63 and notes.
14. Frank Coe, March 20, 1927, HHC. Waite was indicted for the murder of Hindman. The original indictment, badly water stained, is in the Research Files, Mullin Collection, HHC, and was probably among documents that Mullin retrieved from a trash barrel in Lincoln in 1914. The indictment lists seven witnesses to Hindman’s slaying by Waite: Rob Widenmann, Isaac Ellis, Saturnino Baca, Bonifacio Baca, J. B. Mathews, Ike Stockton, and once again the elusive McCormick.
15. Gene Rhodes to Maurice G. Fulton, Santa Fe, May 12, 1927, Fulton Collection, Box 4, Folder 3, UAL.
7. THE SHOOTOUT
1. Much that is known about the events of this day, and some that is erroneous, comes from Almer Blazer and Paul Blazer, son and grandson respectively of Dr. Joseph H. Blazer, proprietor of the sawmill and gristmill. Almer was a boy of thirteen in 1878, and Paul was born twelve years later. Almer’s account appeared in the Alamogordo News, July 16, 1928, and was reprinted as “The Fight at Blazer’s Mill in New Mexico,” Frontier Times 16 (August 1939): 461–66. Paul’s account is “The Fight at Blazer’s Mill: A Chapter in the Lincoln County War,” Arizona and the West 6 (Autumn 1964): 203–10. Almer also gave important details in letters to Maurice G. Fulton, Mescalero, N. Mex., April 24, 1931, and August 27, 1937, Fulton Collection, Box 1, Folder 7, UAL. The Blazers’ explanation for Roberts’s presence at South Fork is much more persuasive than the story embraced by the Coe cousins and other McSween adherents. According to the latter group’s version, the Lincoln County commissioners had posted a reward of either one or two hundred dollars a head for each Regulator, and Roberts had appointed himself a bounty hunter to collect the prize by killing as many as he could. Given the destitute state of the county treasury and the paralysis of the county government, such a reward seems highly unlikely. I have seen no contemporary documentation for it and doubt that any exists. Nor does it make much sense. The Regulators were not widely enough perceived as outlaws to prompt the county commission to put a price on their heads.
That Roberts was employed by Dolan at the South Fork branch store is testified to by Mathews in his deposition for the Angel Report, NARA.
An excellent synthesis of the evidence is Colin Rickards, The Gunfight at Blazer’s Mill, Southwestern Studies Monograph No. 40 (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1974).
2. George W. Coe, Frontier Fighter: The Autobiography of George W. Coe, as related to Nan Hillary Harrison, Lakeside Classics ed., ed. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Co., 1984), 90; Frank Coe in Walter Noble Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1926), 95–100. Burns’s book, so influential in advancing the Kid legend, will not often be cited in these pages as a source. However, Frank Coe’s account to Burns, reproduced verbatim, is detailed and generally supported in other sources. See also Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., March 20, 1927, HHC, for another good Coe reminiscence. Still another account by Frank Coe appeared in the New Mexico State Tribune (Albuquerque), July 23, 1928. The Mesilla Valley Independent, April 13, 1878, reported that the Regulators were at Blazer’s Mills searching for Roberts. For the ambush plot, see Murphy to CO Fort Stanton, Lincoln, April 4,1878, and Lt. Col. Nathan A. M. Dudley to Judge Warren Bristol, Fort Stanton, April 5, 1878, Exhibits 77–3 and 77–4, Records Relating to the Dudley Inquiry (QQ 1284), RG 153, Judge Advocate General’s Office, NARA (hereafter cited as Dudley Court Record). See also Mesilla Valley Independent, April 13, 1878. Colonel Dudley assumed command of Fort Stanton, superseding Captain Purington, on April 4.
3. The others were “Dirty Steve” Stevens, John Scroggins, “Tiger Sam” Smith, and Ygnacio Gonzalez. According to the Mesilla Valley Independent, April 13, 1878, Smith and Gonzalez did not stop at Blazer’s Mills and thus did not participate in the fight.
4. The gunfight has been reconstructed from the Blazer and Coe accounts cited in nn. 1 and 2, from the account in the Mesilla Valley Independent, April 13, 1878, and from the testimony of David M. Easton, a Blazer employee, at the Dudley Court of Inquiry, in the Dudley Court Record, NARA. The Blazer accounts, which depart in some important ways from the version given here, draw on Billy Bonney himself. After his murder conviction in Mesilla in April 1881, the deputies escorting Billy to Lincoln for execution paused for the night at Blazer’s Mills. Here the Kid gave his version of the fight, even acting it out on site in pantomime. The Coe accounts draw substantiation in their essentials from the contemporary report in the Independent, which was probably written by Albert J. Fountain. Besides being editor of the Independent, Fountain was clerk of the district court and among the party the Regulators allegedly plotted to ambush. Thus he would have been at Blazer’s Mills only a day or so after the fight. My reconstruction closely follows that of Rickards, Gunfight at Blazer’s Mill.
5. These quotations and those that follow are from Coe’s New Mexico State Tribune account. In the Haley interview, Coe explains the personal enmity behind Roberts’s remark as stemming from a scrap the week before. According to Coe, Roberts said, “If it was you, George Coe, and Brewer, I would surrender to you. But there is the Kid and Bowdre, and if we had got them last week we would have killed them, and I won’t surrender.” Coe adds, “The week before they had had a running fight with the Kid and Bowdre down below San Patricio but they got up a side canyon and got away.” Coe also alludes to this episode in the account included in Burns’s Saga of Billy the Kid. This encounter, if it occurred, is otherwise undocumented.
6. Joe Buckbee (grandson of Scurlock, quoting Scurlock), interview with Philip J. Rasch, Austin, Texas, July 20, 1963, Scurlock File, Rasch Collection, Lincoln State Monument, N. Mex. (hereafter LSM).
7. In the New Mexico State Tribune account, but not in his others, Frank Coe includes Billy with Bowdre, Middleton, and George Coe in the initial group that descended on Roberts. David Easton, however, testified, “I was standing in front of the house conversing with Billy Bonnie alias ‘Kid’ [when] some three or four men of the party passed around the corner of the house to where Roberts was sitting and immediately some eight or ten shots were fired in succession.” Easton said that Roberts, just before dying, identified these men as Bowdre, Middleton, McNab, and Brown and that he named Bowdre as the one who fired the fatal shot (Dudley Court Record, NARA).
8. This is part of the story the Kid told and acted out at Blazer’s Mills in April 1881. Blazer, “Fight at Blazer’s Mill.” Almer Blazer was present. The Kid, in fact, thought he had inflicted the fatal wound on Roberts and so boasted at the time and during the telling at Blazer’s Mills three years later. This story is not corroborated by any other participant.
9. Testimony of Easton, Dudley Court Record, NARA. The Blazers name the Kid as the one who threatened Blazer and Godfroy, but Coe identifies Brewer, which is more believable, since he was the leader.
10. Ealy, “Lincoln County War.”
8. THE WARRIOR
1. For the session of district court, see Lincoln County, District Court Journal, 1875–79, April 1878 term, April 8–24, 1878: 164–91, NMSRCA. Judge Bristol’s charge to the grand jury is given verbatim in a supplement to the Mesilla Valley Independent, April 20, 1878. Two reports of the grand jury are printed in ibid., April 27 and May 4,1878, and in the Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 4,1878.
2. Mesilla Valley Independent, March 16 and 23, 1878; U.S. Marshal John Sherman to Lt. Col. N.A.M. Dudley, Fort Stanton, April 8, 1878, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA; Grady E. McCright and James H. Powell, Jessie Evans: Lincoln County Badman (College Station, Texas: Creative Publishing Co., 1983), 109–13.
3. The Mesilla Valley Independent, May 4, 1878, prints a “card to the public,” dated April 23, in which Dolan and Riley give notice of the closing of their store.
4. Diary of Reverend Ealy, March 10, 1878, Ealy Papers, Special Collections, UAL.
5. A photocopy of McNab’s surety bond as deputy constable, April 27, 1878, is in the Research Files, Mullin Collection, HHC. That McNab obtained his commission at San Patricio is speculation, but Wilson had not been reelected in Lincoln, and the inference seems reasonable. Justice Trujillo proved a consistently reliable McSween supporter.
A revealing chronicle of Copeland’s activities during the last week of April, replete with excitement, confusion, and heavy drinking, is the report of a soldier detailed to aid him: Cpl. Thomas Dole to CO Fort Stanton, May 1, 1878, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. See also “J” to Ed., Lincoln, May 3,1878, Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 18, 1878; and Mesilla News, May 18, 1878.
6. Mary Ealy to Maurice G. Fulton, c. 1927, Fulton Collection, Box 1, Folder 8, UAL.
7. Like Mathews’s February posse, this one consisted of both a Lincoln and a Seven Rivers contingent. From Lincoln were Mathews, Peppin, John Hurley, John Long, and Manuel Segovia (“Indian”). From Seven Rivers were William H. Johnson (Hugh Beckwith’s son-in-law), Robert and John Beckwith, Robert and Wallace Olinger, Lewis Paxton, Milo Pearce, Thomas B. “Buck” Powell, Joseph Nash, Samuel Perry, Thomas Cochran, Thomas Green, Richard Lloyd, Charles Kruling, Reuben Kelly, Charles Martin, John Galvin, and one Perez. See Mesilla Valley Independent, May 11, 1878.
8. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., August 14, 1927, HHC, gives a detailed account of this event. See also “Outsider” to Ed., Fort Stanton, May 1,1878, Mesilla Valley Independent, May 11, 1878.
9. George Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Glencoe, N. Mex., March 20, 1927, HHC, describes the shot in loving detail. The following sources are the basis for my account: Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 11, 1878; “El Gato” to Ed., Fort Stanton, May 10, 1878, ibid., June 1, 1878; “Van” to Ed., Lincoln, May 3, 1878, Mesilla News, May 18, 1878; and “Outsider” to Ed., Fort Stanton, May 1, 1878, Mesilla Valley Independent, May 11, 1878. “Outsider,” whose account is the most reliable and objective, was probably Edgar Walz, Catron’s agent. Military sources are Dudley to AAAG, DNM, Fort Stanton, May 4,11, and 15, 1878, with enclosures (including Lt. George W. Smith’s informative report of May 1) in File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. Frank and George Coe left detailed and graphic reminiscences in interviews with J. Evetts Haley, HHC. Also, George Coe gives an account in Frontier Fighter, 113–24.
10. Dudley to AAAG, DNM, Fort Stanton, May 4, 1878, with enclosures, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA; Dudley to Justice of the Peace David Easton, May 1,1878, RG 393, Post Records, Fort Stanton, LS, Vol. 19: 15–16, NARA. McSween’s arrest in San Patricio is described in Lieutenant Goodwin’s deposition, June 25, 1878, in the Angel Report, NARA. He erroneously dates it May 6, but other documents show it to have been May 2. See also “El Gato” to Ed., Fort Stanton, May 10, 1878, Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), June 1,1878.
11. “El Gato” to Ed., Fort Stanton, May 23, 1878, Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), June 1,1878.
12. Francisco Trujillo, interview with Edith L. Crawford, San Patricio, N. Mex., May 10, 1937, WPA Files, Folder 212, NMSRCA. See also Florencio Chavez, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Lincoln, N. Mex., August 15, 1927, HHC. Chavez got the killing of Indian badly mixed up with the killings of Morton, Baker, and McCloskey. He says he was present, however, and adds, “Billy the Kid told him if he would tell the truth [about the slaying of McNab] he would turn him loose. The Navajo told him the truth. Billy told him to get on his pinto mare and run away, and he could go. The Indian got on and just got started, and the Kid shot him in the back, and four or five men shot him.” Other sources bearing on the cow camp raid are Mesilla News, June 1,1878; Cimarron News and Press, June 6,1878; and Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), June 8,1878.
13. Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, May 25, 1878, with enclosures, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA.
14. Catron to Axtell, May 30, 1878; Axtell to Hatch, May 30, 1878; Hatch to AAG, Department of the Missouri (hereafter DM), June 1; Loud to co Fort Stanton, June 1; endorsement by Brig. Gen. John Pope, June 7; all in File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA.
15. Compare the two depositions in Angel Report, NARA.
16. Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), June 1, 1878; Executive Record Book No. 2, May 31, 1878, TANM, Roll 21, Frame 502, NMSRCA. For Dolan’s letters to the newspaper, see issues of May 25 and June 1. Catron’s anger over the Regulator raid of May 15, which scattered cattle that now belonged to him, had nothing to do with Axtell’s action. Catron did not learn of the raid until two days later.
17. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, February 20, 1928, HHC. For the advent of Sheriff Peppin, see Mesilla News, June 15, 1878; “Scrope” to Ed, Fort Stanton, June 18, 1878, and Lincoln, June 22, 1878, both in ibid., June 29, 1878 (“Scrope” was probably Dolan); Andrew Boyle to Ira Bond, Lincoln, August 2, 1878, Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), August 24, 1878. See also Peppin to Dudley, Fort Stanton, June 18, 1878; Goodwin to Post Adjutant, Fort Stanton, June 22, 1878; Dudley to AAAG, DNM, Fort Stanton, June 22, 1878; all in File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. Also Special Order 44, Hq. Fort Stanton, June 16 [sic, June 18], 1878; and Dudley to Axtell, Fort Stanton, June 20, 1878, Exhibits 77–34 and 77–28, Dudley Court Record, NARA.
18. The warrant and subsequent indictments named Henry Antrim, Charles Bowdre, Doc Scurlock, Henry Brown, John Middleton, Stephen Stevens, John Scroggins, George Coe, Fred Waite, and Richard Brewer. U.S. District Court, Third Judicial District, Record Book 1871–79, Criminal Case 411, June 22, 1878, p. 687, RG 21, Records of the District Court of the United States, Territory of New Mexico, DFRC.
19. George Washington named the men in this contingent as McSween, Copeland, Bonney, Waite, Bowdre, French, Scroggins, Stevens, Jesús Rodriguez, Atanacio Martinez, and Esequio Sanchez. Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 6,1878.
20. The clash of June 27 has been reconstructed from Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 6,1878; Mesilla News, July 6,1878; “Julius” (probably Dolan) to Ed., Lincoln, June 27, 1878, ibid.; Andrew Boyle to Ed., Lincoln, August 2,1878, Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), August 24, 1878. Also Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, June 29, 1878, with enclosures; Capt. Henry Carroll to Post Adjutant, July 1,1878; both in File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. Also Special Order 48, Fort Stanton, June 27, 1878; Dudley to Carroll, Fort Stanton, June 27, 1878; and Special Order 49, Fort Stanton, June 28, 1878: Exhibits 77–43, 77–44, and 78–2 respectively, Dudley Court Record, NARA. Fort Stanton Post Returns, June 1878, NARA (M617, Roll 1218).
21. George Coe, March 20, 1927, HHC. Other sources are Mesilla News, July 13, 1878; Andrew Boyle to Ed., Lincoln, August 2, 1878, Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), August 24, 1878; and Dudley to AAAG, DNM, Fort Stanton, July 6,1878, with enclosures, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA.
22. A scattering of entries in Sallie’s cryptic diary through July and August 1878 suggests more than a casual relationship. Excerpts from the original in Chaves County Historical Society in Roswell, N. Mex., provided by Harwood P. Hinton. An authoritative treatment is Marilyn Watson, “Was Sallie Billie’s Girl?” New Mexico Magazine (January 1988): 57–60.
23. Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), June 27, 1878; George Coe, interviews with J. Evetts Haley, Glencoe, N. Mex., March 20, 1927, and Ruidoso, N. Mex., June 12, 1939, HHC; Robert Beckwith to Josie Beckwith, Lincoln, July 11, 1878, Mullin Collection, HHC.
9. THE FIRE
1. El Paso Times, September 16, 1923.
2. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., August 14, 1927, HHC. See also Jack Shipman, “Brief Career of Tom O’Folliard, Billy the Kid’s Partner,” Voice of the Mexican Border 1 (January 1934): 216–19; and Philip J. Rasch, “The Short Life of Tom O’Folliard,” Potomac Westerners Corral Dust 6 (May 1961): 9–11, 14.
3. Sue (McSween) Barber to Maurice G. Fulton, White Oaks, N. Mex., March 21 and 24, 1926, and October 12, 1928, Fulton Collection, Box 1, Folder 4, UAL.
4. Testimony of Appel, Dudley Court Record, NARA; Mary Ealy to Maurice G. Fulton, December 7,1927, Fulton Collection, Box 1, Folder 8, UAL.
5. Testimony of David Easton, George Peppin, José María de Aguayo, Saturnino Baca, and John Long, Dudley Court Record, NARA. Easton watched the scene from the Dolan store, across the street from the Wortley Hotel. I recount the Five-Day Battle in High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 87–111. See also Philip J. Rasch, “Five Days of Battle,” Denver Westerners Brand Book 11 (1955): 295–323.
6. Unaccounted for is Fred Waite. Whether he was at the Ellis store, or not even present, is not known.
7. U.S. District Court, Third Judicial District, Record Book, 1871–79, p. 696 (June 28, 1878), RG 21, Records of the District Court of the United States, Territory of New Mexico, DFRC; Mesilla News, July 6,1878.
Possemen identifiable by name are Robert and John Beckwith, Andrew Boyle, Roscoe L. Bryant, John Chambers, José Chavez y Baca, Thomas Cochran, John Collins, Charles Crawford, James J. Dolan, “Dummy,” Jesse Evans, Pantaleón Gallegos, John Galvin, Charles Hart, John Hurley, John Irvin, William H. Johnson, John and James Jones, John Kinney, John Long, Jacob B. Mathews, James McDaniels, “Mexican Eduardo,” Lucio Montoya, Joseph H. Nash, Robert and Wallace Olinger, W. R. “Jake” Owens, L. R. Parker, Milo L. Pearce, George W. Peppin, Samuel Perry, Thomas B. “Buck” Powell, James B. Reese, George A. Rose (Roxie), John Thornton, Marion Turner, and Buck Waters.
8. Taylor F. Ealy, “The Lincoln County War As I Saw It,” MS, c. 1927, Ealy Papers, UAL; Mary Ealy to Maurice G. Fulton, c. 1928, Fulton Collection, Box 1, Folder 8, UAL.
9. Pink Simms to Maurice G. Fulton, Great Falls, Mont., April 18, 1932, Fulton Collection, Box 4, Folder 5, UAL. The incidents involving the military are reported in Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, July 16, 17, and 18, 1878, with enclosures, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. See also testimony of Capt. George A. Purington, Asst. Surgeon Daniel Appel, and Saturnino Baca, and affidavits of John Long, November 9,1878, and George Peppin, November 6,1878, Exhibits 6C and 8, all in Dudley Court Record, NARA.
10. Testimony of Jose Maria de Aguayo, Dudley Court Record, NARA.
11. Testimony of Lt. Millard F. Goodwin (Dudley’s adjutant), Dudley Court Record, NARA; Fort Stanton Post Returns, July 1878, NARA (M617, roll 1218).
12. Testimony of Sue McSween and William H. Bonney, Dudley Court Record, NARA.
13. The message to Dudley is enclosed with Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, July 20, 1878, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. The reply was given from memory by Dudley’s adjutant, Lieutenant Goodwin, in his testimony, Dudley Court Record, NARA. Bonney’s testimony in ibid, says McSween showed his note to him after writing it. Although McSween’s carelessly phrased message literally states his intention to blow up his own house, surely he had reference to Dudley’s artillery. The constable was still Atanacio Martínez. By “here,” McSween may have meant Lincoln rather than his house, for Martínez’s name does not anywhere appear as one of the defenders of the McSween house.
14. Testimony of Peppin, Dudley Court Record, NARA.
15. Testimony of Isaac Ellis, George Washington, Martín Chavez, Sgt. Houston Lusk, Pvt. James Bush, George Peppin, Sgt. O. D. Kelsey, Capt. George A. Purington, Dr. Daniel Appel, Samuel Corbet, Sgt. Andrew Keefe, Lt. M. F. Goodwin, Theresa Philipowski, Sebrian Bates, and Francisco Romero y Valencia, Dudley Court Record, NARA.
16. Pink Simms to Maurice G. Fulton, Great Falls, Mont., April 18, 1932, Fulton Collection, Box 4, Folder 5, UAL.
17. Testimony of George Peppin, David M. Easton, Andrew Boyle, Robert Olinger, Joseph Nash, Milo Pearce, and Marion Turner, Dudley Court Record, NARA.
18. A parade of witnesses, including Dudley and Sue, gave conflicting and partisan versions of this conversation, Dudley Court Record, NARA. For the encounter with Peppin, see his testimony and hers, ibid.
19. Testimony of John Long, Andrew Boyle, and Thomas B. Powell, Dudley Court Record, NARA; George Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Glencoe, N. Mex., March 20, 1927, HHC.
20. Testimony of John Long, Andrew Boyle, and Joseph Nash, Dudley Court Record, NARA.
21. Sue (McSween) Barber, interview with J. Evetts Haley, White Oaks, N. Mex., August 16, 1927, HHC.
22. Testimony of Purington, Dudley Court Record, NARA; notes of Dr. D.M. Appel, July 20, 1878, Exhibit B6, ibid.
23. The account that follows is reconstructed from the following sources: testimony of William H. Bonney, José Chavez y Chavez, Joseph Nash, and Andrew Boyle, Dudley Court Record, NARA; and affidavit of Yginio Salazar, Lincoln, July 20, 1878, encl. to Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, July 20, 1878, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA.
Billy’s testimony before the Dudley Court is disappointing. Doubtless at the urging of Sue McSween and her attorney, he was more intent on supporting her thesis that soldiers participated in the fighting than in describing what actually happened. The testimony yields many important clues valuable in reconstructing the sequence, but the historian wishes it had been fuller and less partisan. Soldiers did not participate in the fighting.
24. George Coe, March 20, 1927, HHC.
25. Ibid.
10. THE DRIFTER
1. George Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Glencoe, N. Mex., March 20, 1927, HHC. The Casey brothers, though not Ellen and Lily, seem to have returned from Texas by this time. Coe identified his victims as Caseys.
2. Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, August 3 and 22, 1878, with enclosures, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA.
3. Godfroy to Post Adjutant Fort Stanton, August 3, 1878, encl. to Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, August 3, 1878, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. For the past friction, see McSween to Schurz, February 13, 1878, and McSween to Lowrie, February 25, 1878, RG 75, Office of Indian Affairs, LR, NARA (M234, roll 576). The investigation revealed that Godfroy had been “lending” flour and other supplies to The House to meet temporary shortages. Apparently the loans were repaid in kind, but such casual handling of government stores led to Godfroy’s dismissal. See Watkins Report, NARA.
4. A party of “wild” Indians—that is, unattached to the agency—had been seen in the vicinity, and at first some thought the firing meant these Indians were fighting with agency Indians. These roamers, apt to be more trigger-happy than the agency people, may have been the Indians the Hispanics encountered.
5. George Coe, March 20, 1927, HHC. Frank Coe was also present and told much the same story. See his interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patrico, N. Mex., August 14, 1927, HHC. Other sources bearing on this incident are Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, August 6, 7, 8, and 10, 1878, with enclosures, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. A rich source, enclosure to Dudley’s of August 10, is a lengthy report of an investigation by Capt. Thomas Blair, which includes the accounts of Godfroy, Dr. Blazer, and Interpreter José Carillo. See also Mesilla Valley Independent, August 15, 1878; and Cimarron News and Press, September 19, 1878.
6. Frank Coe, August 14, 1927, HHC.
7. These notes are from Sallie’s diary in the Chaves County Historical Society, Roswell, N. Mex., excerpts provided by Harwood P. Hinton. These take the form of a document assembled by Maurice G. Fulton, who added pertinent entries from other sources as well. Sallie recorded that she received a letter from Billy on July 20 and that her father received one from Charley Bowdre on July 21 telling of the burning of the McSween house. Available from another source is a letter Joe Smith wrote from the Tunstall store on July 19, Fulton Collection, Box 11, Folder 7, UAL. The Five-Day Battle does not seem to have interfered with the U.S. mail. See also Marilyn Watson, “Was Sallie Billy’s Girl?” New Mexico Magazine (January 1988): 57–60.
8. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., February 20, 1928, HHC. See also George Coe, March 20, 1927. As usual, the Coes’ chronology is confused, and they differ somewhat on the sequence of the Regulator wanderings. Frank even has them riding as far west as Los Lunas, on the Rio Grande, but within the known time constraints this seems doubtful. I have adjusted their chronology and sequence to fit what is known from other sources.
9. This quotation and those that follow are from the Frank Coe interview, February 20, 1928, HHC. George Coe tells much the same story, although more briefly.
10. Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, 3 P.M., September 7, 1878, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. Fritz recognized only Sam Smith and Joe Bowers, but Tom O’Folliard later came under indictment for this theft. At the least, I think the thieves were Kid, O’Folliard, Smith, and Bowers, and there were probably others.
11. Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, September 7, 1878, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. This dispatch was prepared before the one cited in ibid.
12. Garrett, Authentic Life, 78. Other sources tend to confirm the version given by Upson-Garrett.
13. The opening of the Staked Plains to cattlemen is well told by J. Evetts Haley in two books: Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman (Boston, 1936; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949); and George W. Littlefield, Texan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1943). See also John L. McCarty, Maverick Town: The Story of Old Tascosa (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946).
14. A. B. McDonald, “Tascosa’s Lone Settler [Mrs. Mickie McCormick] Recalls Wild Days,” Frontier Times 8 (February 1931): 235. Reprint from Kansas City Star.
15. Henry Hoyt, A Frontier Doctor (New York: Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1929). I have used the Lakeside Classics edition, ed. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1979), 148. Hoyt exaggerated Billy’s notoriety in October 1878, forgetting that he did not become a celebrity until later, but his recollections are otherwise authoritative.
16. Ibid., 153.
17. Ibid., 149, 154.
18. Hoyt later presented the document to J. Evetts Haley, and it is now in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas.
19. Garrett, Authentic Life, 81. Fred Waite ended up back home in the Indian Territory, where he served as a tax collector and died naturally in 1895. Henry Brown, after returning for a stint as Tascosa’s first marshal, became a respected Kansas lawman, but he also developed a covert sideline as a bank robber, and in 1884 a lynch mob ended both careers. John Middleton punched cows in Kansas, married an heiress, wrote complaining letters to the elder Tunstall in London, and died in 1885 from the effects of his wound at Blazer’s Mills.
20. Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, December 9, 1878, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA; General Order 62, Fort Stanton, December 20, 1878, Exhibit 45, Dudley Court Record, NARA.
21. Garrett, Authentic Life, 82, 85, says that Billy was arrested in Lincoln, confined in the jail, and escaped. He adds that Billy penciled an inscription on the oak door of his cell stating that he had been imprisoned here on December 22, 1878. This is corroborated nowhere else, and the inscription, which Garrett says he copied in 1881, could not have been on an oak door to a cell. Lincoln still made do with the old cellar jail, reached through a trapdoor. I think this is more Upson apocrypha.
11. THE BARGAIN
1. S. R. Corbet to John Middleton, Lincoln, February 3, 1880, Fulton Collection, Box II, Folder 8, UAL.
2. New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC. I have dealt with this background in greater detail in High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 125–31.
3. Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, February 19, 1879, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. Dudley was shown the letter and told of the reply.
4. Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, February 21, 1879, Exhibit 79–43, Dudley Court Record, NARA. Three parties to the agreement told Dudley its terms.
5. The most detailed and authoritative evidence for reconstructing the events of this night is a newspaper account summarizing the testimony of participants and witnesses in Judge Bristol’s court in Mesilla in July 1879: Mesilla Valley Independent, July 5, 1879. See also ibid., March 9 and 22, 1879; Mesilla News, March 1, 1879; Las Vegas Gazette, March 1, 1879; Las Cruces Thirty-Four, March 6 and 19 and April 9, 1879; and Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, February 19, 1879, with enclosures, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA. Edgar Walz, Tom Catron’s brother-in-law and agent in Lincoln, who was present, wrote a graphic reminiscent account: “Retrospection,” MS, October 1931, in Museum of New Mexico Historical Library, Santa Fe. For a synthesis of the evidence, see Philip J. Rasch, “The Murder of Huston I. Chapman,” Los Angeles Westerners Brand Book 8 (1959): 69–82.
6. Kimball to CO Fort Stanton, February 18, 1879, and Lt. Byron Dawson to Post Adjutant, February 19, 1879, both encl. to Dudley to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, February 19, 1879, File 1405 AGO 1878, NARA.
7. Walz, “Restrospection.”
8. Wallace to Hatch, Lincoln, March 7, 1879; Special Field Order No. 2, Hq. DNM, March 8, 1879; Wallace to Hatch, Lincoln, March 9, 1879; all in Lew Wallace Papers, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis (hereafter IHS).
9. Wallace to Carroll, Lincoln, March 11 and 12, 1879, Wallace Papers, IHS.
10. Wallace to Hatch, Lincoln, March 5, 1879; Wallace to Carroll, Lincoln, March 10, 1879; Carroll to Wallace, March 11, 1879; Wallace to Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, Lincoln, March 21, 1879; all in Wallace Papers, IHS. Special Order 34, Fort Stanton, March 6, 1879, Exhibit 79–58, Dudley Court Record, NARA.
11. Wallace to Schurz, Lincoln, March 31, 1879, Wallace Papers, IHS; “Rio Bonito” to Ed., Fort Stanton, April 8, 1879, Mesilla Valley Independent, April 12, 1879.
12. Wallace to Hatch, Lincoln, March 6, 1879, Wallace Papers, IHS.
13. The exchange of letters is in the Wallace Papers, IHS. This first letter from Billy, however, is not there, nor is another that is critical to the events of chapter 15. The two are available because Maurice G. Fulton obtained copies from Lew Wallace’s son. The one here cited appears in Fulton’s History of the Lincoln County War, ed. Robert N. Mullin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), 336.
14. Wallace did not describe this meeting in his memoirs but told the story to a reporter. Between Wallace’s tendency to romanticize and the reporter’s inclination to embellish, it may not have come out exactly faithful to factual detail. The spirit and the substance, however, appear reliable, and my account is drawn from this report. See Indianapolis World, June 8, 1902.
15. For the escape of Evans and Campbell, see Mesilla Valley Independent, April 5, 1879; and Carroll to COS Forts Bayard, Craig, and Bliss, Fort Stanton, March 19, 1879, RG 393, Post Records, Fort Stanton, N. Mex., LS, Vol. 20: 241, NARA.
16. Wallace to Schurz, Lincoln, March 31, 1879, Wallace Papers, IHS.
17. “Statement by Kid, made Sunday night March 29, 1879,” Wallace Papers, IHS.
18. Capt. Juan Patrón to Wallace, Fort Sumner, April 12, 1879, Wallace Papers, IHS. For the Rifles, see Campaign Records, Lincoln County Rifles, 1879, TANM, Roll 87, Frames 185–202, NMSRCA.
19. Leonard to Wallace, Lincoln, May 20, 1879, Wallace Papers, IHS.
20. Lincoln County, District Court Journal, 1875–79, April 1879 term: 333–35 (April 28, 1879), NMSRCA. The indictment of Evans, Criminal Case File 229, is also in NMSRCA. A photostat of the indictment of Dolan and Campbell, Criminal Case 280, is in the Fulton Collection, Box 12, Folder 2, UAL.
21. Mesilla Valley Independent, May 10, 1879.
22. Leonard to Wallace, April 20, 1879, Wallace Papers, IHS; Lincoln County, District Court Journal: 316–18 (April 21, 1879), NMSRCA.
23. Mesilla Valley Independent, May 10, 1879; Mesilla News, May 1, 1879, in New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 17, 1879.
24. The voluminous transcript and appended exhibits are in RG 153, Judge Advocate General’s Office, Records Relating to the Dudley Inquiry (QQ 1284), NARA.
In his memoirs, published in 1906, Lew Wallace reproduced a number of letters written by his wife, Susan Wallace, from New Mexico during his governorship. One that she penned at Fort Stanton during the Dudley inquiry mentioned Billy Bonney and has been cited frequently by Kid students. In one passage, she wrote, “The Lincoln County reign of terror is not over, and we hold our lives at the mercy of desperadoes and outlaws, chief among them ‘Billy the Kid,’ whose boast is that he has killed a man for every year of his life. Once he was captured, and escaped after overpowering his guard, and now he swears when he has killed the sheriff and the judge who passed sentence upon him, and Governor Wallace, he will surrender and be hanged.”
This letter is not in the Wallace Papers, and I am led to believe that Wallace or his wife manufactured the quoted passage many years later, after Billy the Kid had become a celebrity. Everything in it, including the appellation “Billy the Kid,” dates from after May 11, 1879. Certainly at this time he had yet to develop such intense animosity toward the governor.
See Susan E. Wallace to Henry L. Wallace, Fort Stanton, May 11, 1879, in Lew Wallace, Lew Wallace: An Autobiography, 2 vols. (New York and London: Harper and Bros., 1906), 2: 920–21.
25. Mesilla Valley Independent, June 21, 1879.
26. Mesilla News, June 21, 1879.
27. San Miguel County, District Court Records, Criminal Case 1005, Territory v. The Kid: Keeping a Gaming Table, NMSRCA.
28. Henry Hoyt, A Frontier Doctor, Lakeside Classics edition, ed. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1979), 183–87. This incident displays all the implausibilities of the typical Ash Upson tale, but Hoyt’s credibility in other respects makes one hesitate to toss it in the bin of Upsonian fantasies. In an appendix Editor Nunis discusses the issue, showing that James’s presence in Las Vegas in July 1879 is not precluded by other evidence of his whereabouts. Under the name Thomas Howard, he and his family lived in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1875 to 1881, but he traveled extensively. The railroad had just reached Las Vegas, and he may well have been exploring possibilities. Also, according to the Las Vegas Optic, December 6, 1879, “Jessie James was a guest at Las Vegas Hot Springs, July 26th to 29th. Of course it was not generally known.”
29. Purington to AAAG DNM, Fort Stanton, August 17, 1879, RG 93, LR, Hq. DNM, NARA (M1088, Roll 38).
30. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., February 20, 1928, HHC.
31. Las Vegas Gazette, December 28, 1880.
12. THE RUSTLER
1. William Wier, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Monument, N. Mex., June 22, 1937, Vandale Collection 2H482, Barker History Center, University of Texas.
2. Quoted in Walter Noble Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1926), 185–86.
3. The quotations of Paulita Maxwell Jaramillo are from Burns, Saga of Billy the Kid, 180–90. Burns interviewed Mrs. Jaramillo in Fort Sumner. In its first version, his account identified Mrs. Jaramillo as an object of Billy’s affections, but his publisher’s lawyers, fearing libel, forced him to rewrite it. The true story, as developed by his research, is set forth in Burns to Judge William H. Burges (El Paso), Chicago, June 3, 1926, Research Files, Mullin Collection, HHC. Burns’s findings are enlarged by the researches of Maurice G. Fulton as set forth in the Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC. Fulton’s information came principally from Charles Foor, a Fort Sumner old-timer in the 1920s who had been on the scene in 1880. This documentation states that Burns’s Abrana García was really Serina Segura, who was given a false name to protect her identity. Since the 1880 census lists Abrana García, twenty-two, and her husband, Martín García, thirty-three, this seems to be in error. Nasaria Yerby is listed in the 1880 census as unmarried and the mother of a son, three, and a daughter, Florintina, aged one; see New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC. For another, confirming source citing Foor, see Leslie Traylor, “Facts Regarding the Escape of Billy the Kid,” Frontier Times 13 (July 1936): 512. Celsa Gutierrez also presents a problem, which I can resolve only by assuming that her maiden and married names were both Gutierrez, a common Hispanic surname. The 1880 census lists her as twenty-four and the wife of Sabal Gutierrez, with a son, aged three. This census also lists Dolores and Feliciana Gutierrez, ages fifty-two and thirty-six, living with their six-year-old grandson, Candido. In later years, according to the Fulton-Mullin documentation, Candido stated that he was the son of Sabal and Celsa Gutierrez, although there is also some indication that he was born to Celsa out of wedlock. Pat Garrett’s marriage record reveals that his bride, Apolinaria Gutierrez, was also the daughter to Dolores Gutierrez and thus was Celsa’s sister. See William A. Keleher, The Fabulous Frontier: Twelve New Mexico Items, 2d ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 68.
4. The pattern is well described in John L. McCarty, Maverick Town: The Story of Old Tascosa (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946), 81ff.
5. John Meadows, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Alamogordo, N. Mex., June 13, 1936, HHC. Coghlan’s story is graphically told in C. L. Sonnichsen, Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West, 2d ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1980), 245–59. See also New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC.
6. Las Vegas Gazette, December 28, 1880.
7. F. Stanley, Dave Rudabaugh: Border Ruffian (Denver: World Press, 1961); Bill O’Neal, Encyclopedia of Western Gun-Fighters (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979), 269–71; William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881: A New Mexico Item (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), 281–82. For the escape, see Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), April 5 and 12, 1880.
8. Philip J. Rasch, “He Rode with the Kid: The Life of Tom Pickett,” English Westerners Tenth Anniversary Publication (London, 1964), 11–15; O’Neal, Encyclopedia, 154–55; Las Vegas Morning Gazette, January 10, 1884; New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC.
9. Philip J. Rasch, “Amende Honorable—The Life and Death of Billy Wilson,” West Texas Historical Association Year Book 34 (1958): 97–111.
10. The usual version, drawn from Garrett, Authentic Life, 86–89, has all the marks of another Upson yarn. In this instance, however, the Upson version is confirmed in all essentials by William Chisum, interview with Allen A. Erwin, Los Angeles, 1952, AHS. Although Will’s memory may have been heavily influenced by the Authentic Life, he surely heard the story many times from his father, James Chisum, who was a witness. Adding to Will’s credibility, his account contains details absent from the Upson rendering. See also Harwood P. Hinton, “John Simpson Chisum, 1877–84,” New Mexico Historical Review 31 (October 1956): 332–33. In addition to the Erwin interview, Hinton drew on correspondence with Will Chisum. Despite the improbabilities, therefore, I am inclined to credit the accepted version, from which the following account is drawn.
11. A cryptic notice appeared in the Weekly New Mexican (Sante Fe), January 17, 1880: “Billy Bonney, more extensively known as ‘the Kid,’ shot and killed Joe Grant. The origin of the difficulty was not learned.” In his letter of February 3, 1880, to John Middleton, Sam Corbet referred to the shooting: “Bill Boney shot and killed a man at Ft. Sumner not long since, by the name of Grant, do not know the cause.” Fulton Collection, BOX 11, Folder 8, UAL.
12. Las Vegas Daily Optic, February 22, 1881.
13. William Chisum, 1952, AHS. See also Hinton, “John Simpson Chisum,” 333.
14. San Miguel County, District Court Records, Criminal Case 1185, Territory v. William Bonney: Stealing Cattle, NMSRCA.
15. Pat Garrett and his deputy, John William Poe, described the transaction for reporters when Coghlan’s bout with the law ground to a close in the spring of 1882: Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), April 22, 1882; New Mexico News and Press (Raton), May 6, 1882.
The pattern, and Billy’s role in it, were exposed in the winter of 1880–81 by Charley Siringo and other agents of the Panhandle stockmen. Siringo tells the story in A Texas Cowboy; or, Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony (Chicago: M. Umbdenstock & Co., 1885), chapter 23.
According to my construction, Billy was busy during May 1880 at Los Portales and on the Staked Plains. Some writers, however, say that he participated in an escapade in Albuquerque in May 1880 in which he and one John Wilson stole a horse and a mule, only to be captured by a posse and lodged in the county jail. Promptly indicted, tried, and convicted, he was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary. He dug his way through the cell wall, however, and made good his escape. For example, see Donald Cline, Alias Billy the Kid: The Man Behind the Legend (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1986), 88–91.
This adventure is recorded in the Bernalillo County Court Docket Book for the May 1880 term, NMSRCA; and in press items in the Albuquerque Advance, May 8 and 22, and the Albuquerque Review, May 20, 1880. In neither the court records nor the newspapers is the culprit identified by any name other than “Kid” or “Kidd.” Moreover, a newspaper item observes that this Kid had previously been confined in jails at Trinidad, Las Vegas, and Santa Fe. Since Billy Bonney had been in none of these jails at this time, since no other source places him anywhere near Albuquerque throughout 1880, and since he was well enough known by May 1880 to have been recognized as Antrim or Bonney, I am convinced that the Albuquerque Kid is not our Kid.
16. McCarty, Maverick Town, 82–85.
17. Wild submitted daily reports to the Chief of the U.S. Secret Service from his arrival in Santa Fe in September 1880 until his return to his New Orleans headquarters early in January 1881. See U.S. Treasury Department, Secret Service Division, New Orleans District, Reports of Special Operative Azariah F. Wild (T915, Roll 308), RG 87, Records of U.S. Secret Service Agents, 1875–1936, NARA (hereafter Secret Service Records).
18. Albert E. Hyde, Billy the Kid and the Old Regime in the Southwest (Ruidoso, N. Mex.: Frontier Book Co., n.d.), 19.
19. A biography is Leon Metz, Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973). See also William A. Keleher, The Fabulous Frontier: Twelve New Mexico Items (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962), 67–101. With the advent of Pat Garrett in this story, his Authentic Life of Billy the Kid becomes an authentic historical source. Beginning with chapter 16, the tone changes dramatically, the narrative shifts to first person, and much of the content is corroborated in other sources. Upson occasionally prettified the prose, but the writing is now essentially Garrett’s, and for succeeding events he knew whereof he wrote. Henceforth the Authentic Life will be cited in these pages without apology.
20. George Curry, An Autobiography (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1958), 18–19. Curry, later a Rough Rider and territorial governor, related a much-quoted anecdote of Billy’s political activities. See also Keleher, Fabulous Frontier, 72–73.
21. Metz, Pat Garrett, 57.
22. Azariah F. Wild, report for January 2, 1881, Secret Service Records, NARA.
23. Henry Hoyt, A Frontier Doctor, Lakeside Classics ed., ed. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1979), 185; Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), December 17, 1880.
24. Azariah F. Wild, daily reports for October 20, 22, and 28, November 1 and 6, 1880, Secret Service Records, NARA.
13. THE CELEBRITY
1. Azariah F. Wild, daily reports for October 6 and 9, 1880, Secret Service Records, NARA.
2. Ibid., daily report for January 14, 1881.
3. For Grzelachowski, a fascinating character in New Mexico’s history, see Francis C. Kajencki, “Alexander Grzelachowski: Pioneer Merchant of Puerto de Luna, New Mexico,” Arizona and the West 26 (Autumn 1984): 243–60.
4. William Chisum, interview with Allen A. Erwin, Los Angeles, 1952, AHS; Mason’s affidavit, March 18, 1881, and related documents, including indictment of the grand jury, in San Miguel County, District Court Records, Criminal Case 1200, Territory v. William Wilson, Samuel Cook, Thomas Pickett, and William Bonney: Larceny of Horses, NMSCRA. Mason’s affidavit gives November 18 as the date, but that does not fit well with later known dates. November 15 is the date given in Garrett, Authentic Life, 91.
5. San Miguel County, District Court Records, Criminal Cases 1276 and 1278, Territory v. Barney Mason: Altering Brands, NMSRCA.
6. For a sketch of Mason, see Philip J. Rasch, “Garrett’s Favorite Deputy,” Potomac Westerners Corral Dust 9 (Fall 1964): 3–5.
7. The quotation is from the Socorro Sun, December 20, 1881, quoted in F. Stanley, Notes on Joel Fowler (Pep, Texas: n.p., 1963), 10. See also New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC; Philip J. Rasch, “Alias ‘Whiskey Jim,’” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 36 (1963): 103–14; and W. H. Hutchinson and Robert N. Mullin, Whiskey Jim and a Kid Named Billie (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1967). The Greathouse ranch was located a mile or more southwest of the present town of Corona.
8. Garrett, Authentic Life, 92, says the provisions were purchased. According to Wild’s daily report for Monday November 22, 1880, Secret Service Records, NARA, “Information has just reached me through a reliable source that Billy Kid had been driven out of the Canadian River country and was now at Greathouse ranch with twenty five armed men, and a bunch of stolen horses. On Saturday night [November 20] seven of Kids men went to White Oaks and attempted to rob one or two places and stole a lot of blankets, over coats, rifles and provisions.”
9. Garrett, Authentic Life, 91–92. Garrett dates this event November 20. Operative Wild, however, in his report for November 21, 1880, records Mason’s journey from Lincoln to White Oaks as occurring on November 21; Secret Service Records, NARA.
10. The best account is in Garrett, Authentic Life, 91–92. This account, however, has Billy riding back to White Oaks—where the horse came from is unspecified—and circulating unrecognized in a saloon containing members of the posse. Then the next night he is said to have taken a shot at a townsman in front of the Hudgens saloon. That Billy would have gone back to White Oaks at all seems improbable to me. He was afoot, without provisions, and a marked man in town. I think he told the truth when he later said, “After mine and Billie Wilsons horses were killed we both made our way to a Station forty miles from the Oaks kept by Mr. Greathouse.” Bonney to Wallace, Fort Sumner, December 12, 1880, Wallace Papers, IHS. This also coincides with the statement of Joe Steck, a hand at the Greathouse ranch, cited in n. 11 below: “One day the cowboys [Billy and friends] went away, returning after three days.”
11. The detailed account by Steck, an employee at the ranch, appeared in the Lincoln County Leader (White Oaks), December 7, 1889, and was reprinted in William A. Keleher, The Fabulous Frontier: Twelve New Mexico Items (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962), 70–72. The standard and apparently authoritative version is Garrett, Authentic Life, 94–97. A press report obtained from posse members, datelined Las Vegas December 20, appeared in the New York Sun, December 27, 1880. A fourth account, although twice removed from the action, also merits citation; it was obtained by Frank Stewart, the Panhandle Stock Association’s detective, from members of the posse and was passed on to Pink Simms, who in turn sent it to Maurice G. Fulton in a letter of May 16, 1932, Fulton Collection, Box 4, Folder 5, UAL.
12. Bonney to Wallace, December 12, 1880, Wallace Papers, IHS. The Steck and Garrett accounts do not mention an ultimatum or a shot. Both the New York Sun and Stewart accounts support Billy’s version.
13. Las Vegas Daily Optic, January 21, 1881.
14. New York Sun, December 27, 1880.
15. Garrett, Authentic Life, 96.
16. Las Vegas Gazette, December 3, 1880, in William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), 286–88. Key runs of the Gazette, including this issue, exist only in the Keleher Collection, which is not presently open to the public.
17. Bonney to Wallace, Fort Sumner, December 12, 1880, Wallace Papers, IHS.
18. Executive Record Book No. 2, 1867–82, p. 473, December 13, 1880, TANM, Roll 21, Frame 565, NMSRCA. W. S. Koogler to Wallace, November 30, 1880; Wallace to Koogler, December 4, 1880; Wallace to Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, December 7 and 14, 1880; all in Wallace Papers, IHS.
14. THE CAPTURE
1. San Miguel County, District Court Records, Civil Case 1100, John Deolevara v. Fredrike Deolevara: Divorce, NMSRCA. The file contains letters written by the estranged wife, together with her husband’s commentary, indicating that outlaws, including “Billy Kid,” often visited the house where she lived and threatened the plaintiff when he tried to get custody of the children.
2. The plan unfolds in Wild’s daily reports from November 4 through the balance of the month, Secret Service Records, NARA.
3. Wild had also remained in Roswell. His daily reports contain some details of the “raid,” but the best source is Garrett, Authentic Life, 101–4. For the raid on the Diedrick ranch, see Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), December 13, 1880.
4. Garrett, Authentic Life, 105–6.
5. Ibid., 114–15, says they moved into town. Brazil, in a newspaper interview, says they also spent time at the two ranches: Las Vegas Gazette, December 27, 1880.
6. Bowdre to Lea, Fort Sumner, December 15, 1880, Ritch Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (hereafter HL), microfilm copy in NMSRCA; Garrett, Authentic Life, 115.
7. The most authoritative account of these and subsequent events is Garrett, Authentic Life, 11 off. Accounts of three participants are James H. East, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Douglas, Ariz., September 27, 1927, HHC; Louis P. Bousman, interview with J. Evetts Haley, October 23, 1934, HHC; and Charles Frederick Rudulph, “Los Bilitos”: The Story of “Billy the Kid” and His Gang (New York: Carlton Press, 1980), 206–54. See also James H. East to Charlie Siringo, Douglas, Ariz., May 1, 1920, in Charles A. Siringo, History of “Billy the Kid” (Santa Fe: n.p., 1920), 97–105. Siringo, who headed one of the two parties, told his story first in A Texas Cowboy; or, Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony (Chicago: M. Umbdenstock & Co., 1885); again in A Lone Star Cowboy (Santa Fe: n.p., 1919); and still again in Riata and Spurs (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927). As a result of these books, Siringo became something of an icon in the historiography of the Southwest. His penchant for romanticizing, however, gravely weakens his reliability; and anyway he did not join his comrades in volunteering for Garrett’s expedition to Fort Sumner, a decision for which he must have bitterly reproached himself throughout a lifetime of self-glorification. Although somewhat garbled, another firsthand account was given a reporter by M. S. Brazil, a peripheral actor in the events: Las Vegas Gazette, December 27, 1880. For East, see also J. Evetts Haley, “Jim East, Trail Hand and Cowboy,” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 4 (1931): 48–61. The story is also told in Leon Metz, Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 71ff.; and John L. McCarty, Maverick Town: The Story of Old Tascosa (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946), 84ff. A number of the original sources are reprinted in James H. Earle, ed., The Capture of Billy the Kid (College Station, Texas: Creative Publishing Co., 1988).
8. The six, besides Stewart, were “Tenderfeet Bob” Williams, Louis “The Animal” Bousman, “Poker Tom” Emory, James East, Lee Hall, and Lon Chambers.
One of those who continued to White Oaks with Siringo was Cal Polk. As Jim East observed, “Cal Polk was just a kid and I did not blame him for not going.” But Cal Polk himself said that he went with Garrett, describing his adventures in elaborate detail in a manuscript “Life of Cal Polk, commenced January 25, 1896,” now preserved in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at Canyon, Texas (hereafter PHPHM). It is a curious document, not only for its amusing phonetic spelling but also for its combination of wild fancy with demonstrable fact. Polk clearly knew much that occurred on the Garrett expedition. By 1896 Garrett and Siringo were the only participants who had published their accounts. Polk may have obtained some of his material from their books, and very likely he absorbed a lot by talking with the other Texans such as East. Since no other authority places Polk with Garrett, I do not believe he went, which leaves this part of his autobiography, at least, a phony.
9. Rudulph, “Los Bilitos,” 207.
10. Roybal’s mission is recounted by Garrett, Authentic Life, 114–15, and by his fellow townsman Rudulph, “Los Bilitos,” 208.
11. So Rudabaugh’s friend John J. Webb told Garrett when arrested at Bosque Grande on November 30: Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), December 13, 1880.
12. My account of the ambush substantially follows Garrett, Authentic Life, 118–19. Surprisingly, for events so thoroughly worked over, the chronology of the Garrett expedition is hopelessly muddled or entirely nonexistent both in the sources and the secondary works. A close reading of the Authentic Life discloses a reasonably satisfactory sequence, beginning with the posse’s arrival in Fort Sumner on the morning of December 18. Garrett, however, telescopes into one day, the eighteenth, events that I have spread over two days; as a result, Garrett has O’Folliard’s death on December 18 and the capture at Stinking Springs on December 22. This not only leaves him with a day unaccounted for in his own calendar but also contradicts most other sources, which give the two dates as December 19 and 23. Both Rudulph and East support me in placing the posse in Sumner one night before the night of O’Folliard’s death.
13. James H. East, September 27, 1927, HHC. I find East’s account of the deathbed scene more believable than the melodramatic conversation among Garrett, Mason, and O’Folliard given in Authentic Life, 120, which I suspect owed more to Upson than Garrett.
14. Garrett, Authentic Life, 121.
15. Rudulph, “Los Bilitos,” 210.
16. Garrett, Authentic Life, 122.
17. So Brazil related to Garrett: ibid., 126.
18. The sources disagree on who went with whom. East names only himself, Emory, Chambers, and Hall as accompanying Garrett, while relegating Stewart, whom he obviously did not like, to the position of horse tender. Both Rudulph and Bousman include themselves with Garrett, and Mason was there. Garrett says only that he divided his force between Stewart and himself.
19. Garrett says he gave no warning; Rudulph and Bousman agree; East says Garrett shouted “Throw up your hands!” Garrett and Rudulph say everyone fired; East says only Garrett and Lee Hall fired; Bousman says he, Garrett, and Chambers fired.
20. This according to Garrett, Authentic Life, 125. Others gave slightly different versions. For example, Rudulph, East, and Bousman name Bonney as the one who shouted that Bowdre wanted to come out. East quotes the Kid as saying, “Charley, you are going to die anyway, so go out and see if you can’t get some of them.” East also says that Bowdre had his six-shooter in hand but was too weak to cock it. Bousman says that the pistol remained in its holster and that he, Bousman, took hold of Bowdre and laid him on a blanket.
21. Rudulph, Brazil, and East support Garrett’s version. Bousman says he killed the horse in the doorway and Garrett severed the other ropes, although Bousman, erroneously assuming that Rudabaugh had not been remounted, counts only one other horse.
22. Las Vegas Gazette, December 28, 1880.
23. Garrett makes no reference to this incident. East tells the story both in his Haley interview and his letter to Charley Siringo. Bousman noted: “Mason said, ‘Now Pat, let’s kill the sons-a-bitches.’ We threw down on him and said, ‘You dirty son-of-a-bitch, just try that and we’ll cut you in two and Pat too.’”
24. Rudulph, “Los Bilitos,” 214.
25. East to Siringo, May 1, 1920, in Siringo, History of “Billy the Kid,” 105.
26. East to Siringo, April 20, 1920, in ibid., 105–7. East also tells the story in East to William H. Burges, Douglas, Ariz., May 20, 1926, Research Files, Folder labeled “Saga of Billy the Kid,” Mullin Collection, HHC. Probably because Paulita was still alive and denied any liaison with the Kid, East’s letter to Siringo, as printed, named her Dulcinea Toboso. The unpublished letter to Burges used correct names.
27. Rudulph, “Los Bilitos,” 214; East to Siringo, May 1, 1920, in Siringo, History of “Billy the Kid,” 97–105; Louis P. Bousman, interviews with J. Evetts Haley, September 7 and October 23, 1934, HHC.
28. Lea to Wallace, Roswell, December 24, 1880, Ritch Collection, HL, Microfilm Reel 9 in NMSRCA.
29. As previously mentioned, Garrett’s chronology is flawed, as are those of almost all other sources and commentators. Garrett has the posse and prisoners leaving the Wilcox-Brazil ranch for Las Vegas immediately after the surrender, spending the night neither at the ranch nor in Fort Sumner but reaching Puerto de Luna on Christmas afternoon. Since he also dates the surrender on December 22, this leaves two and one-half days and two nights for a journey that in fact required a day and a night. Most of the other sources agree that the party passed the night of the surrender, December 23, at the Wilcox-Brazil ranch, reached Sumner shortly before noon on the twenty-fourth and departed shortly after noon, and arrived at Grzelachowski’s store in Puerto de Luna after noon on the twenty-fifth, where they were treated to a hearty Christmas dinner. They were in Las Vegas by late afternoon, December 26.
15. THE SENTENCE
1. Las Vegas Gazette, December 27, 1880 (extra). Rudulph, Wilson, and the Roybal brothers had returned to their homes in Puerto de Luna. The rest of the Texans (Williams, Bousman, Hall, and Chambers) had taken the road to White Oaks to rejoin Siringo and the others who had declined to go with Garrett.
2. Albert E. Hyde, Billy the Kid and the Old Regime in the Southwest (Ruidoso, N. Mex.: Frontier Book Co., n.d.), 20–22 (reprint of an article, “The Old Regime in the Southwest: The Reign of the Revolver in New Mexico,” Century Magazine 63 [March 1902]).
3. These quotations and those that follow are from Las Vegas Gazette, December 28, 1880.
4. Ibid.; Garrett, Authentic Life, 129.
5. Garrett, Authentic Life, 129, says he dismissed all but Stewart and Mason and enlisted the help of a friend, mail contractor Mike Cosgrove. The Las Vegas Gazette, December 30, 1880, identifies the guards as I have given them, and Jim East testifies to his presence and Emory’s in interview with J. Evetts Haley, Douglas, Ariz., September 27, 1927, HHC.
6. Garrett, Authentic Life, 130. East says Garrett shoved a six-shooter into the leader’s stomach and pushed him off: James H. East, September 27, 1927, HHC.
7. Las Vegas Gazette, December 28, 1880.
8. Ibid.; Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), December 29, 1880.
9. James H. East, September 27, 1927, HHC.
10. Ibid. Another firsthand account is Hyde, Billy the Kid, 24–28.
11. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), December 28, 1880.
12. Leon Metz, Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 89–91.
13. This and subsequent missives from Billy to Wallace are in the Wallace Papers, IHS.
14. Las Vegas Gazette, January 4 and March 12, 1881; Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), January 6, 1881.
15. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), March 1, 1881.
16. This letter is not in the Wallace Papers but was obtained from Wallace’s son by Maurice G. Fulton. Its text appears in Fulton’s History of the Lincoln County War, ed. Robert N. Mullin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), 336, and in William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881: A New Mexico Item (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), 300.
Nearly twenty years later, in a newspaper interview, Wallace said of this letter, “I knew what he meant. He referred to the note he received from me and in response to which he appeared at the hut on the mesa [Squire Wilson’s hut in Lincoln]. He was threatening to publish it if I refused to see him. I thwarted his purpose by giving a copy of the letter and a narrative of the circumstances connected with it to the paper published in the town. It was duly printed and upon its appearance a copy was sent to ‘Billy’ in his cell. He had nothing further to say.” Indianapolis World, June 8, 1902. No such item has been found in Santa Fe newspapers, and of course Billy had much more to say.
17. Las Vegas Gazette, March 30, 1881; Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), April 2, 1881. Both Rudabaugh and Wilson were convicted, and both escaped from jail. Rudabaugh disappeared into Mexico, where he made himself so obnoxious that at Parral, in 1886, residents killed him and cut off his head. Wilson supposedly went to Texas, lived respectably under an assumed name, and ultimately won a presidential pardon. However, Donald R. Lavash, biographer of Sheriff William Brady, is presently researching the life of Billy Wilson and is convinced that the man pardoned in Texas was not the man convicted in New Mexico.
18. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), April 3, 1881.
19. Helen Irwin, “When Billy the Kid Was Brought to Trial,” Frontier Times 6 (March 1929): 214–15, based on recollections of George Bowman, clerk of the court, and originally appearing in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, December 2, 1928.
20. The proceedings against Billy in Mesilla, both federal and territorial, are thinly documented, both in official records and the newspapers. Surviving records of the federal trial are in Criminal Case 411, U.S. v. Charles Bowdre, Dock Scurlock, Henry Brown, Henry Antrim, John Middleton, Stephen Stevens, John Scroggins, George Coe, Frederick Wait: murder. U.S. District Court, 3d Judicial District, RG 21, Records of the District Court of the United States, Territory of New Mexico, DFRC.
21. In addition to official sources, consult the secondary accounts in Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 305–15; and Philip J. Rasch, “The Hunting of Billy, the Kid,” English Westerners Brand Book 11 (January 1969): 6.
22. A biography is A. M. Gibson, The Life and Death of Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965). Curiously, the book is silent on Fountain’s role as the Kid’s attorney.
23. Surviving records are Criminal Cases 531 and 532, Territory v. William Bonney alias Kid: murder; and Doña Ana County, District Court Journal: 384–91, 406–07, 411, NMSRCA. The case was tried in Doña Ana County on a change of venue from Lincoln County, where the identifying numbers were 243 and 244. These records are printed as an appendix to C. L. Sonnichsen and William V. Morrison, Alias Billy the Kid (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1955), 98–107.
24. Mesilla News, April 16, 1879.
25. Las Vegas Gazette, April 28, 1881.
16. THE ESCAPE
1. Bell Hudson, quoted by his daughter in Mary Hudson Brothers, A Pecos Pioneer (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1943), 71–72. See also Philip J. Rasch, “The Olingers, Known Yet Forgotten,” Potomac Westerners Corral Dust 8 (February 1963): 1, 4–6.
2. Gildea to Maurice G. Fulton, Pearce, Ariz., January 16, 1929, New Mexico Notebook, Mullin Collection, HHC; W. R. (Jake) Owens, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Carlsbad, N. Mex., June 24, 1937, HHC; Lily (Casey) Klasner, My Girlhood among Outlaws, ed. Eve Ball (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972), 188; Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 1, 1881.
3. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881; Garrett, Authentic Life, 134.
4. Newman’s Semi-Weekly (Las Cruces), April 17, 1881.
5. Paul Blazer, “The Fight at Blazer’s Mill: A Chapter in the Lincoln County War,” Arizona and the West 6 (Autumn 1964): 210; Garrett, Authentic Life, 132.
6. Garrett, Authentic Life, 132.
7. Bonney to Caypless, Mesilla, April 15, 1881, copy in LSM. The text also appears in William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881: A New Mexico Item (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), 320–21.
8. John P. Meadows, in collaboration with Maurice G. Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him,” MS, c. 1931, Rasch Collection, LSM. There is also a Meadows interview with J. Evetts Haley, Alamogordo, N. Mex., June 13, 1936, HHC, and a newspaper interview, “My Personal Recollections of ‘Billy, the Kid,’” Alamogordo News, June 11, 1936.
Meadows’s reminiscences challenge the historian. Internal evidence and other sources leave little question in my mind that he knew the Kid well, perhaps as well as he says. In April 1881 Meadows and a partner operated a little spread on the Peñasco south of Lincoln. According to Meadows, after Billy escaped from confinement in Lincoln, he came to the cabin and stayed over one night, during which he related the story of his incarceration and breakout. If true, this is the only source in which Billy’s own testimony is given. That Billy visited the Meadows cabin cannot be corroborated in other sources, but neither do other sources foreclose the possibility. To me, the Meadows recollections, allowing for fifty years’ dimming of memory and the inevitable exaggerations of the old-timer, ring true. With a faintly nagging hesitation, I have chosen to use them as source material.
9. Garrett, Authentic Life, 134.
10. Ibid., 133.
11. Ibid., 138.
12. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881.
13. I have combined Garrett’s and Billy’s similar versions of this incident to present what seems to me most likely. Garrett, Authentic Life, 137; and Meadows and Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him.”
The reconstruction that follows is drawn from several firsthand sources. They agree in some respects, disagree in others, and (usually the case) describe an incident in differing detail. In evaluating these sources, I have considered closeness to the event in time and place and, admittedly a highly personal judgment, plausibility—what most likely happened given the people, the setting, and the evidence. In addition to Garrett and Meadows, as cited above, the sources are an anonymous letter from Lincoln in Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881; two anonymous letters from White Oaks, April 30, 1881, in ibid.; account in Golden Era (White Oaks), May 5, 1881; anonymous letter from Lincoln, April 29, 1881, in New Southwest and Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), May 14, 1881; anonymous letter from Seven Rivers, N. Mex., May 11, 1881, in Tombstone Epitaph, June 6, 1881; account in Las Vegas Morning Gazette, May 10, 1881; account of Godfrey Gauss, Lincoln, January 15, 1890, in Lincoln County Leader (White Oaks), March 1, 1890; and Yginio Salazar, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Lincoln, N. Mex., August 17, 1927, HHC.
The account in the Grant County Herald deserves special mention. The writer had a sleeping room on the first floor of the courthouse and, when the break occurred, had just left the building with Ben Ellis to walk down the street to Ike Ellis’s store for dinner. The two heard the firing but attributed no significance to it. When they returned, they witnessed the final stages of the escape. Both in time and place, therefore, this account has immediacy.
Immediacy of place but nine years distance in time marks the account of Godfrey Gauss, who knew Billy from their weeks in Tunstall’s employ and who played a direct role in the escape.
Garrett was not in Lincoln, but obviously he took pains to find out what had happened and why, then wrote his account some five months later.
Finally, there is the Meadows account, previously discussed, which purports to give Billy’s own version but is separated in time from the event by fifty years.
14. Herman B. Weisner, “The Prisoners Who Saw the Kid Kill Olinger,” Rio Grande History 9 (Las Cruces: New Mexico State University Library, 1978): 6–7. The five men were Alexander Nunnelly, Charles Wall, John Copeland (not the Copeland of Lincoln County War note), Augustin Davalas, and Marejildo Torres.
Some accounts have Olinger taking these men out for the noon meal. However, the contemporary sources, and Garrett, specify evening.
15. Thus I credit the Meadows account of the killing of Bell. There are several others, but the only witness to the killing was the killer, and if Meadows told the truth, this is Billy’s own version.
The first press accounts, which had to be based on surmise, reported that Billy and Bell were playing cards when Billy hit him with the handcuffs and grabbed his revolver.
In Garrett’s rendering, Billy got so far ahead of Bell coming up the steps that he hobbled to the armory, shoved open the locked door, scooped up a pistol, and returned to the top of the stairs in time to shoot Bell as he came up. Bell was undoubtedly careless, but that careless?
In still another version, Billy’s friend Sam Corbet planted, or caused to be planted, in the privy a pistol wrapped in a newspaper and slipped word of it to Billy. This story, current among Lincoln old-timers in the 1920s and 1930s, was credited to Bonifacio Baca, Corbet’s brother-in-law. See Leslie Traylor, “Facts Regarding the Escape of Billy the Kid,” Frontier Times 13 (July 1936): 509. The respected historian of the Lincoln County War, Maurice G. Fulton, subscribed to this version. See his History of the Lincoln County War, ed. Robert N. Mullin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), 394–95. Fulton, who never bothered to cite sources, said that Judge Lucius Dills, a turn-of-the-century New Mexico attorney with a passion for history, had proved that after the shooting Bell’s pistol was still in his holster, fully loaded. I have not seen this “proof”; but if it resembles other Dill essays in history that I have seen, it is highly suspect. Until such proof is forthcoming, the recital that Meadows attributed to Billy seems to me the more plausible.
16. Gauss account in Lincoln County Leader (White Oaks), March 1, 1890, as confirmed by the account in Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), May 14, 1881. A letter from Lincoln in the Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881, reported that “Bell lay dead in the back yard with one bullet through him and two gashes on his head, apparently cut by a blow from the handcuffs.”
17. All the sources are in essential agreement about the details of this event. My account combines mainly Gauss, Garrett, and the Kid (Meadows). Some accounts (including the Meadows account) identify Alex Nunnelly, one of the men held in the Tularosa killings, as the one who told Olinger that the Kid had killed Bell. This does not make sense, for Nunnelly would have been on the other side of the street with Olinger. Nunnelly did figure in subsequent events, which probably led later to the erroneous ascription of this and other actions to him.
18. Kid (Meadows) and Gauss accounts. Again, Meadows wrongly attributes Gauss’s role to Nunnelly.
19. Las Vegas Daily Optic, May 3, 1881.
20. Anonymous from Lincoln, April 29, 1881, in Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), May 14, 1881.
21. Ibid. There are variations of what Billy said and when he said it, but the quotation is from an eyewitness writing the next day. The same observer stated that Billy also threw his handcuffs at Bell with a similar expletive. Since Bell’s body lay in the backyard, this is less easy to credit.
22. This is according to Gauss.
23. Garrett, Authentic Life, 138. Finally, we have a logical role for Nunnelly to play in the story. All others, in my judgment, were distortions of this act.
24. Ibid., 138.
25. Ibid., 138–39.
26. Las Vegas Optic, May 4, 1881.
27. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881.
28. Ibid.; Executive Record Book No. 2, 1867–82, April 30, 1881, pp. 507–8, TANM, Microfilm Reel 21, Frame 581, NMSRCA. Legal documents of this period were full of misspelled words. Bonney was often spelled Bonny, and William Antrim was occasionally substituted for Henry Antrim as an alias.
29. Executive Record Book No. 2, 1867–82, June 30, 1881, p. 515, Frame 586, TANM, NMSRCA.
17. THE EXECUTION
1. As related by Francisco Gómez in Leslie Traylor, “Facts Regarding the Escape of Billy the Kid,” Frontier Times 13 (July 1936): 510. Gómez incorrectly remembers the escape as at noon rather than in the evening. He also has Billy going up Baca Canyon rather than Salazar Canyon. But Baca Canyon lies east of Lincoln and would not have offered a logical route over the mountains to Las Tablas. Following up Salazar Canyon, Billy would have reached the Capitan summit near the head of Las Tablas Creek.
2. Yginio Salazar, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Lincoln, N. Mex., August 17, 1927, HHC; Garrett, Authentic Life, 140; Godfrey Gauss in Lincoln County Leader (White Oaks), March 1, 1890.
3. John P. Meadows, in collaboration with Maurice G. Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him,” MS, c. 1931, Rasch Collection, LSM. I have discussed this source in CHAPTER 16, n. 8. Barney Mason, who claimed that he trailed the Kid, gives his route as Agua Azul, Newcomb’s Ranch (on the Ruidoso), “Consios” Springs (probably Conejos), and Buffalo Arroyo: Las Vegas Morning Gazette, June 16, 1881. Thus Mason mentions neither Las Tablas nor the Peñasco, but does not necessarily preclude them either. Conejos and Buffalo are near Fort Sumner and do not rule out the Peñasco. In addition to the Meadows account, I think the reports of Mathews’s death lend support to Billy’s presence on the Peñasco.
4. Barney Mason interview, Las Vegas Gazette, June 16, 1881. Mason calls the site of the stampede Consios Springs, which I think is a reporter’s or printer’s corruption of Conejos. Mason also says Billy went from these springs to Buffalo Arroyo, stole another horse, and made his way to Sumner. Buffalo Arroyo would have taken him to Sumner by a longer route, which does not seem logical.
5. Garrett, Authentic Life, 140–41; Las Vegas Gazette, May 12 and June 16, 1881.
6. Tombstone Epitaph, June 16, 1881.
7. Garrett, Authentic Life, 142.
8. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881.
9. Garrett, Authentic Life, 142–43.
10. Poe’s wife wrote an admiring but informative biography of her husband. Sophie A. Poe, Buckboard Days, 2d ed., introduction by Sandra L. Myres (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981).
11. John W. Poe, The Death of Billy the Kid, introduction by Maurice G. Fulton (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1933), 12–15. Poe wrote this account sometime early in the twentieth century, and it was first published in a British magazine in 1919. A Roswell bank president, Poe died in 1923.
Poe portrays Garrett as so incredulous of the report that only with the greatest difficulty could he be persuaded to go to Fort Sumner. Garrett says he acted on the strength of Brazil’s letter, and he does not even mention Poe’s tip. I think that both reports prompted the decision and that, despite apprehension that it would be wasted effort, Garrett made the decision without any resistance.
The son of Tip McKinney, another Garrett deputy, stated in 1969 that Poe’s information really came from Pete Maxwell, who wanted Billy removed from influence on his sister Paulita. Thus the story of the informant in the hay loft was concocted to protect Maxwell from retaliation by Billy’s friends. See Leon Metz, Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 98. This is hard to credit, if for no other reason than that time is a relentless enemy to conspiracies. Sooner or later, they tend to unravel. Even the Kid’s staunchest friends would have been unlikely to harm Maxwell, who was not only well liked but also an economic power in the Fort Sumner area. Moreover, Poe was a stranger recently arrived from Texas. Maxwell did not know him, or he Maxwell, as Poe himself divulged. Had Maxwell wanted to squeal on Billy, it would surely have been to Garrett. Finally, by the time Poe wrote his account, he would have had no reason to preserve such a fiction. It is not even hinted in any other credible source.
12. Garrett says McKinney was in Lincoln. Poe says he joined at Roswell.
Many and detailed accounts of the happenings of July 14, 1881, have been printed, a few with documentation, most without. Besides Garrett and Poe, who were indisputably firsthand witnesses and participants, the sources, when identified, are mostly Fort Sumner residents, and they represent almost as many versions as there were residents. Poe wrote some thirty years afterward, but he had a good memory and a reputation for honesty. Garrett left three accounts, two at the time and the third within a year: (1) Garrett’s report to the governor of New Mexico, Fort Sumner, July 15, 1881, widely printed in the press (I have used the Rio Grande Republican [Las Cruces], July 23, 1881); (2) Garrett interviews with newsmen in Las Vegas Optic, July 18, 1881, and Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881; and (3) Authentic Life, 143–49. Garrett may have had reasons for tampering with the truth, but until credible evidence can be presented to show that he did, and to show how he did, his testimony must be given more weight than anyone else’s. Without apology, therefore, I lean primarily on Garrett and secondarily on Poe. Tracing the many accounts of Billy’s activities on this day is like chasing a prairie zephyr. I shall indulge it in restrained moderation.
13. Garrett, Authentic Life, 144, says they went in to talk with Maxwell; Poe, Death of Billy the Kid, 28, says that they intended to watch the house. I think both were motives, as logically they should have been. Again Poe portrays Garrett as the negativist, convinced that Billy was nowhere about and ready to give up. Poe takes credit for the idea of consulting Maxwell and then only after the three had watched the town plaza from hiding for a couple of hours. Since Poe did not know Maxwell or his reputation and Garrett did, I think Poe’s memory played tricks on him.
14. Garrett mentions this man, but strangely Poe does not. His wife Sophie, however, does refer to him in Buckboard Days, 109–10.
15. The house to be watched is usually assumed to have been where Celsa Gutierrez lived with her husband, Sabal. This could have been kept under observation from a point behind and slightly to the west of Bob Hargrove’s saloon (see map), although the view of other buildings would have been narrowly restricted. A point farther east would have afforded a wider view, but chiefly of the rear of the old barracks, which would have blocked direct sight of Celsa’s apartment. Another possibility is that Garrett may have intended to keep watch on Manuela Bowdre’s place. If she still lived in the old hospital building, this latter location in the orchard would have been a perfect point of observation. And finally, the Maxwell house itself, where Paulita Maxwell lived, cannot be altogether discounted.
16. Garrett, Authentic Life, 145. Poe does not mention this incident.
17. Lobato and Silva gave their stories to former New Mexico Governor Miguel Otero, who reproduced them within quotation marks in The Real Billy the Kid: With New Light on the Lincoln County War (New York: Rufus Rockwell Wilson, 1936), 154–58. Their recollections are entitled to consideration, but Otero’s book is so bad that one hesitates to believe anything in it.
18. A belief persists that Billy was armed only with a butcher knife. Besides being highly uncharacteristic of him to be caught anywhere without a gun, both Garrett and Poe say he had a pistol (his Colt .41 “self-cocker,” according to both Garrett and a letter from Sunnyside dated July 15, 1881, that appeared in the Las Vegas Optic, July 18). Although Garrett and Poe had reason to want the world to believe that Billy carried a pistol, their testimony that he did can be disqualified only by equally persuasive evidence that he did not. I am not aware of any.
19. Poe, Death of Billy the Kid, 31–35.
20. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881.
21. Poe’s account of what happened after the shooting (Death of Billy the Kid, 39–44) is more detailed and persuasive than any of Garrett’s.
22. Ibid., 40–41. Deluvina Maxwell also described the scene: “Pete took a candle and held it around in the window and Pat stood back in the dark where he could see into the room. When they saw that he was dead, they both went in.” Deluvina denied the prevalent story that Garrett sent her inside with the candle to see if Billy was dead. Deluvina Maxwell interview with J. Evetts Haley, Fort Sumner, N. Mex., June 24, 1927, PHPHM.
23. This is from Charles Frederick Rudulph, “Los Bilitos”: The Story of “Billy the Kid” and His Gang (New York: Carlton Press, 1980), 252. This is an “interpretive translation” by Louis L. Branch of Rudulph’s manuscript in Spanish and therefore must be handled with caution. Rudulph, however, brings two elements of authority to his account. First, as a nineteen-year-old, he came to Fort Sumner the next day with his father, Milnor Rudulph, who headed the coroner’s jury. Second, through his mother and, later, through his own wife, he was part of the Hispanic community and was in a better position than most to know how they reacted.
24. Poe, Death of Billy the Kid, 44.
25. Rudulph, “Los Bilitos,” 252–53, which also reproduces the report of the coroner’s jury.
26. Poe, Death of Billy the Kid, 42. Both Poe and Rudulph have the body moved the night before, after the shooting. However, the coroner’s report, executed on July 15, explicitly states that the jurors proceeded to a room in the Maxwell house where they examined the body.
27. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881.
18. THE LEGEND
1. New Southwest and Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), July 23, 1881; New York Sun, July 22, 1881.
2. “Billy the Kid’s Exploit,” National Police Gazette, May 21, 1881.
3. These and more than four hundred additional outpourings over the next seventy years are described in J. C. Dykes, Billy the Kid: The Bibliography of a Legend (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1952).
4. Most of my biographical details come from sketches in William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881: A New Mexico Item (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), 73–75; and idem, The Fabulous Frontier: Twelve New Mexico Items (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962), 144–49. The characterization is from Lily (Casey) Klasner, My Girlhood among Outlaws, ed. Eve Ball (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972), 116–23. Lily knew him well. Upson’s letters to relatives are in the Fulton Collection, UAL.
5. Las Vegas Gazette, October 22, 1881, stated that the book had already been written and would soon be published, which means that it was completed in record time after the death of the Kid. Quoted in Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 75.
6. Letter quoted in Keleher, Fabulous Frontier, 147.
7. The thesis of the social bandit was propounded as an English phenomenon in Eric J. Hobsbawm, Social Bandits and Primitive Rebels (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959). For its application to the American West, see Richard White, “Outlaw Gangs of the Middle Border: American Social Bandits,” Western Historical Quarterly 12 (October 1981): 387–408.
8. Paul A. Hutton, “Billy the Kid as Seen in the Movies,” Frontier Times 57 (June 1985): 24–29.
9. For scholarly assessments of the legend, see especially Stephen Tatum, Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881–1981 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982); Kent Ladd Steckmesser, The Western Hero in History and Legend (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965); Jon Tuska, Billy the Kid: A Handbook (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986); Alfred Adler, “Billy the Kid: A Case Study in Epic Origins,” Western Folklore 10 (April 1951): 143–52; and J. Frank Dobie, “Billy the Kid,” Southwest Review 14 (Spring 1929): 314–20. Dykes, Billy the Kid, surveys the published literature to 1952, but of course there has been much since that has not been systematically recorded.
10. “Brushy Bill” was the most vocal and persistent claimant. He even appeared in person before the governor of New Mexico to ask for a pardon. His case is stated, although not widely regarded as proved, in C. L. Sonnichsen and William V. Morrison, Alias Billy the Kid (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1955). Advocates of conspiracy seize upon perceived suspicious circumstances to convert possibility into fact. The theoretical possibility exists that Billy the Kid was not killed at Fort Sumner in 1881. To prove that he was not, however, demands hard evidence that has yet to be revealed. Until that day arrives, we must believe that if Billy does not rest beneath the sod in the old Fort Sumner cemetery, it is not because he was not buried there on July 15, 1881.
11. John P. Meadows, in collaboration with Maurice G. Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him,” MS, c. 1931, Rasch Collection, LSM; Henry Hoyt, A Frontier Doctor, Lakeside Classics ed., ed. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1979), 154.
12. William Chisum, interview with Allen A. Erwin, Los Angeles, 1952, AHS.
13. Meadows and Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him.”
14. Deluvina Maxwell, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Fort Sumner, N. Mex., June 24, 1927, PHPHM; Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881.
15. Meadows and Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him.”