The Curse of Billy the Kid: Untold Legends Volume One

by Tamsin L. Silver

  The Curse of Billy the KId

  Untold Legends Volume One

  Tamsin L. Silver

  This book is dedicated to William H. Bonney, the town he loved so much (Lincoln, NM), and the amazing people who live there.

  Contents

  1. Murder Most Foul

  2. Off To Jail

  3. A Furry Cellmate

  4. The Curse

  5. Frank Macnab

  6. Regulators Ride

  7. Morton And Baker

  8. Meet Their Maker

  9. The Dangerous One-Mile Ride

  10. Susan Mcsween And The Man From England

  11. Colonel

  12. The Medicine Man’s Apprentice

  13. The Witch Of Scáthach

  14. Being Followed

  15. Gaax

  16. Full Moon

  17. George Coe’s Ride From Hell

  18. Hope Your Well Isn’t Dry

  19. Francisco Gómez

  20. Zahara

  21. Some Bad News, And Some More Bad News

  22. Agua Negra

  23. All Fools Day

  24. Killing Fever

  25. Brave As A Lion

  26. The Battle At Blazer’s Mill

  27. Running Out Of Time

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Afterword

  Falstaff Books

  Friends of Falstaff

  1

  Murder Most Foul

  March, 1949

  It’s weird to be dead.

  Or rather, it’s a strange feeling when the world thinks you’re dead and yet, here you are, walking around, saving the world from evil...

  Well, I best not get ahead of things. Let me introduce myself. My name is William Kidwell, or it is for the time being. Back in the day, they called me by another name, but we’ll get to that.

  I arrived in New Mexico today for a job, and though it’s not the first time I’ve been here since I “died” in 1881, the memories of my life here flooded my brain, making everything I did connect to something back then. Though I’m not the same man I was, what happened to me in the 1870s affected who I’ve become.

  But who am I? Well, I could go back to the beginning and say I was born in 1859 to a poor Irish woman, that she left Ireland for New York City, then took me and my brother out West where she died when I was about fourteen. I could tell you a story about how I was a good kid when it all began...but that shit is boring, and no one, not even me, wants to rehash it. What needs remembering is the year I became a Regulator ‘cause that’s where my true life began.

  I’d just turned eighteen years old, and unfortunately, it was a death that gave me my new life.

  February 18, 1878

  The thunderous echo of approaching horsemen behind Middleton and me interrupted the leisurely quiet of the New Mexico canyon, announcing danger. We spun about to see a large posse on horseback coming at us. I knew it had to be the same men we’d been expecting to fight at the ranch until Tunstall had decided he wasn’t gonna let anyone die over the cattle in question. So we’d fled early that morning from Dolan’s men, yet if I was right, here they were.

  Even though it was hard to tell if I was right at this distance with the sun having just begun to set behind the mountains, I had a bad feeling. Because if it was Dolan’s boys led by Buck Morton, we were in trouble. I looked over at John Middleton since we were the only two at the back of the traveling party, the other three having gone over the brow of the next hill ahead of us.

  “We best not hang about for that to catch up!” I shouted. Without waiting for a reply, I slammed my heels into the sides of my gray stallion’s sides, and we picked up speed.

  Middleton’s bay mare kept pace, and we raced through the newly fallen snow, up over the hill, and past the nine horses we were moving to town. Didn’t take long to realize our three friends had split up. Tunstall looked to be asleep in the saddle up to our right while Widenmann and Brewer were off the trail to the left.

  Making a quick decision, I shouted, “Get Tunstall outta here! I’ll find the others!”

  With a nod, Middleton rode hard toward Tunstall, and I veered off the path to the left.

  Finding Brewer and Widenmann, I shouted, “We got trouble!”

  Widenmann’s head whipped around as Dolan’s posse came up and over the hill. Seeing them, he shouted, “We can’t hold this place! Let’s ride to the hill over there and make a stand!”

  Middleton shouted at Tunstall, “For God’s sake, follow me!”

  Without a second thought, I followed Brewer and Widenmann toward an area covered with tall timber and large boulders, assuming Middleton and Tunstall were right behind us. Yet, as Middleton joined us, he was alone.

  “Where’s Tunstall?” I said, panic clenching my gut.

  John Tunstall was the one they would be after. Jimmy Dolan was out for blood ever since John posted a letter in the Mesilla Valley Independent exposing Dolan and his pals as the real crooks of Lincoln County.

  Middleton spoke up. “I yelled for him to follow. He rode about in a half-circle, and I motioned him in this direction. As soon as he started toward me, I led the way. Maybe he didn’t hear me?”

  “Or maybe he didn’t want to hear you,” I clarified. “Damn it, John, you can’t talk your way out of this one!”

  “What?” Middleton asked.

  “Not you, the other John. We really need to give you a new first name,” I said before looking to Richard M. “Dick” Brewer, Tunstall’s cattle foreman. “Tunstall thinks he can surrender and fight this in court.”

  “Damn it! They’ll kill him,” Dick replied, his voice strained and his eyes filled with worry.

  “Let’s lay down some cover fire and get him outta there!” Rob Widenmann, Tunstall’s best friend, shouted.

  Dick’s eyes scanned the area, which was no more than vast, unsettled land filled with nothing but brush and trees surrounded by mountains covered in a dusting of snow. We were well hidden, but that caused another problem.

  “Billy, you’re the smallest. Can you climb?”

  I nodded, dismounted, and handed Middleton the reins. I’d have preferred to ride out there and take a shot at them myself, but I understood what Brewer was aiming for. At five-foot-seven and only a hundred and thirty-five pounds, I was the best option for giving us eyes to what was happening on the other side of the hill, especially as it was getting dark.

  Spotting a good tree, I started up. Halfway there, an eerie silence filled my ears like water, and a rifle shot echoed off the canyon walls. I came to a halt as dread slammed into my soul.

  “Oh, God,” Middleton said. “They’ve killed Tunstall.”

  I prayed he was wrong and scaled the tree as fast as I could. Once high enough, the scene before me froze the air in my lungs. John Tunstall, a man I admired, lay on the ground next to his horse, his left cheek buried in the snow.

  The group of twenty or so men had split into three sections. Most were back a few hundred yards, but four men rounded up our small herd of horses. I recognized two of them right away as Beckwith and Gallegos. That left just three men on horseback looming over John’s body. I recognized two of them straight away. It was Billy “Buck” Morton and Tom Hill. The third man looked like the dangerous outlaw I used to ride with, Jessie Evans, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

  Morton’s rifle was still in firing position as Hill dismounted. With swagger, Hill pulled the revolver on Tunstall’s belt and fired a bullet into John’s head before killing his horse the same way. Laughing, he placed John’s hat on the dead horse’s head as Morton shouted orders
to Beckwith about rounding up our horses.

  Eyes wide and jaw clenched, I sat there, unable to move. My innards felt cold to the core while my blood burned as hot as a smithy’s furnace. Drenched in a need for revenge, I shook with rage, gripping the tree with all my might to keep from grabbing my gun right then and there. I was on the brink of losing it when Brewer appeared below me. He wanted answers I didn’t want to give.

  Swallowing the pain, I climbed down and gave the news. Widenmann, a big man with a temper to match, went off his rocker. It took both Brewer and Middleton to stop him from riding out there and getting himself killed.

  “There’s too many,” I told him, keeping my voice down as best I could while the other two held him tight. “You know me. I’m the first to jump into the fray, Rob, but now ain’t the time. Not if we want to live to see them bastards pay.”

  We waited for the safety the dark of night provided and then rode for town. Widenmann had Brewer and Middleton divert to John Newcomb’s farm to get help bringing Tunstall’s body into town while he and I headed straight to Lincoln.

  The whole ride I tried not to think on how I’d left John’s dead body lying in the snow out there in the dark. I may not have had much in common with the twenty-four-year-old British businessman, but I respected him, and I didn’t think highly of many people.

  Since my momma died and my stepfather abandoned me and my brother, I’d not felt part of anything. On the run and alone, I’d been unable to find where I belonged until John had gotten me out of jail and given me a job. He’d believed in me and given me the family I desperately needed. For that alone, I vowed that anyone involved in his murder would die at my hand.

  We arrived in town a little after ten o’clock that night and split again. While Widenmann rode to inform Alexander McSween, Tunstall’s lawyer and friend who was also under attack by the Murphy/Dolan faction, I headed to where news would travel the fastest: Ike Stockton’s Saloon. By midnight, all of Lincoln knew about John, the news traveling like wildfire from town to Fort Stanton and beyond.

  By the time I arrived at McSween’s and entered his stable, I found the horses belonging to the rest of my gang already settled for the night. Handing my horse off to be taken care of by one of the servants, I walked toward the patio, the outdoor area between the long sides of the U-shaped home. Getting closer, I heard shouting and picked up the pace.

  With a hand on my gun, I ran toward the gate of the long west wall of the patio. Stepping through, I saw Henry Brown, and he was as mad as a March hare.

  Brown shoved Brewer with all his might, still barely able to move the large man more than a step back. “Where were y’all?” he demanded. When Dick didn’t reply, Henry pulled his gun and pointed it at the six-foot-four German man. “Tell me!”

  Without flinching, Brewer replied, “I suggest you point that thing somewhere else.”

  “Or what?” Brown challenged. “You’ll leave me to be killed like ya did John?”

  Brown had begun the journey with us that morning, but when his horse had thrown a shoe, he’d returned to the Tunstall ranch on the Rio Feliz to get it fixed. As such, he wasn’t with us when Dolan’s men arrived.

  “Henry, it wasn’t like that,” I said, alerting the group to my presence.

  “The hell it wasn’t!” he shouted at me without taking his eyes off Brewer.

  Widenmann stepped forward. “We didn’t leave him!” he yelled, his voice bouncing off the walls of the patio. Quieting down, he continued. “You really think we’d have just thrown him to the wolves to save our own hides? Damn it!”

  “Rob,” Dick started to say, but Widenmann was on a roll.

  “After Waite split off to take the wagon on the road, we all kept drivin’ the horses on the trail. Those of us up front ran into some wild turkey. John was half asleep in the saddle but encouraged Dick and me to go catch us a few, sayin’ he’d watch the horses with them two,” he said, indicating Middleton and me.

  “Us two?” I exclaimed. “We were at least five-hundred yards behind y’all, for God’s sake. With you and Brewer a few hundred yards to the left of the trail and us that far back, he was a sittin’ duck. Why didn’t he follow us, Dick?” I asked. “They shot him without a gun in his hand, and I know John, he’d have surrendered, thinkin’ he could talk to them about McSween’s debt.”

  “We both know darn well that warrant for McSween is bullshit,” Dick said.

  “Do we?” I said, keeping my voice down. “He says the bank fees and his own take up a lot of what was owed by that life insurance policy, but for all we know, he’s as crooked as a Virginia fence and owes more to Emilie Fritz than he’s sayin’.”

  Brewer stared me down, his blue eyes hot with anger. “He might not be the most honest lawyer, but he sure as hell didn’t embezzle ten thousand dollars from that woman. It’s just a ruse Murphy and Dolan came up with to remove him and Tunstall as their competition.”

  “More like just Dolan,” Widenmann interjected. “Murphy’s too sick with the cancer to do anythin’. Hell, bastard’s drunk most of the time, leavin’ Dolan free to do whatever he wants.”

  “And an army of men without a moral compass betwixt them to back him up,” Henry added.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say my compass is overly moral bound either,” I admitted. “But they killed an unarmed man who’s done nothin’ but tell the truth. We need to make them pay.”

  “I’m with Billy,” John Middleton finally said. He’d been silent, leaning against the house, smoking a cigarette. He smashed it under his foot and looked to Henry Brown. “I called out to John as we fled. He chose to not follow us, and it was too late by the time we realized it.”

  Henry settled onto an old chair outside the summer kitchen. “Then this is my fault,” he choked out. “Morton followed my tracks in the snow from the ranch back to y’all. If my horse hadn’t―”

  “Don’t start that now,” Middleton said. “No one is to blame except Dolan and his men, and if we don’t fight back, The House will take everything and leave us for dead.”

  The House was what everyone in Lincoln County called those affiliated with the primary general store/bank/post office recently renamed J.J. Dolan & Company, owned and run by Jimmy Dolan. Anyone who was a part of The House fell under the protection of him and the previous owner, Lawrence Murphy. Sheriff Brady himself, a fellow army buddy of both Murphy and Dolan, was obviously loyal to The House, as were his deputies. This alone would make getting retribution for John’s murder a sticky situation.

  With a hum of thought, Dick scratched at his goatee. “McSween isn’t one for violence, but Dolan doesn’t respond to anythin’ else. We have to find a way to compromise.”

  The idea of not using violence made my trigger finger twitch. “Is that a bluff, or do you mean it for real?”

  “I have an idea,” Dick said, causing us all to look at him. “We give it a few days. If McSween don’t do nothin’, I’ll go to Mr. Wilson.”

  “Now you sound like Tunstall,” I said. “What is the Justice of the Peace gonna do? You said it yourself, Dolan will only respond to violence, and I’m happy to give it to him.”

  Dick placed his great paw of a hand on my shoulder. “And you’ll get that chance. Just pull in your horns for a few days. Let’s see if we can make the killin’ of those bastards legal. All right?”

  I never had liked waiting. I was a get-it-done-now kinda man, but it made sense, so I agreed, sort of. I might’ve decided to do something to keep busy in the meantime.

  March, 1949

  My momma used to say that idle hands are the devil’s playground, and I was living proof of that. That being the case, I did the dumbest thing I could possibly think of that night: I snuck away as a bunch of angry townsfolk debated the situation and headed down the street to poke my nose around the building that housed J.J. Dolan & Company.

  I secretly hoped I’d get to shoot one of those sons of bitches, but then big, loyal, honest Dick Brewer discovered me and demanded he come alo
ng. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it started to snow again. But to tell you the truth, by the time we returned, I couldn’t have cared less about either of those things. Because what I saw that night gave me pause...the kind that causes nightmares and makes every bump in the night mean something.

  February, 1878

  Except for the activity around the saloons, it was quiet along the one mile long, lazy S of Lincoln’s main road. Staying low, we moved silently through the night, hiding behind the houses west of McSween’s.

  Looking up, the clouds blocked my view of the moon. “What time is it?”

  Brewer pulled out his pocket watch and hit it with his other hand. “If this is right, it’s just after midnight.”

  “Then we might have time for a base burner at the saloon after we see what Dolan is up to.”

  Brewer removed his hat, shook the snow off the wide brim, and placed it back on his head. “You know you’re barkin’ at a knot with all this, right?”

  “We’ll see. Come on.”

  We looped around the back of the Wortley Hotel and Diner, crossed the street, and used the shadows and darkness to work our way to the west side of the Dolan Store. The building itself was the only two-story in the town of Lincoln, and though the main structure was a large, rectangular shape, there’d been a smaller two-level room added on to the west side. Using this to our advantage, we peered around the corner of it and saw a large group of workers.