by Ron Hansen
Because Celsa wanted his company and because Saval was still prospecting northeast of White Oaks, hunting for fortunes that would never be found, she invited the Kid to Pat F. Garrett’s Wednesday marriage to her cousin Apolonaria in the white, twin-spired San Jose Catholic Church in Anton Chico. Garrett was nearing thirty, his wife was twenty-two. Joining them in the double wedding ceremony was a Virginian named Barney Mason, who still worked for Pete Maxwell, and Barney’s seventeen-year-old bride, Juanita Madril.
Apolonaria’s father, José, owned a successful freighting company, and he hosted a fiesta afterward in the Abercrombie general store, founded by a Scottish father and son who’d frequently been hospitable to the Kid. And though Garrett wouldn’t himself dance, he howled encouragement and fervently applauded the hilarity of friends making, he thought, fools of themselves. Celsa fed the Kid some wedding cake and got up to see if the quartet would play “Turkey in the Straw.” The Kid found the tune irresistible, and he was encircled and cheered as he sang, dancing an Irish jig his mother had taught him. And Celsa noticed that Garrett’s face was now solemn, for the Kid of course was famously indicted and Celsa knew that Patrick F. Garrett was considering a run for Sheriff of Lincoln County.
- 16 -
THE RUSTLERS
Ever in motion, the Kid recruited into his gang his cousin Yginio Salazar and his pal Pascal Chaves, Garrett’s friend Barney Mason, and Billie Wilson, a headlong eighteen-year-old petty thief originally from Ohio with whom the Kid was often confused by the authorities. Wilson had owned a livery stable in the burgeoning tent city of White Oaks, which, since its founding in 1879, was filling up with optimistic miners. But Billie Wilson sold out his faltering business in exchange for a sack full of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills that looked pretty darn good to him. Also in White Oaks, at West & Dedrick Livery & Sales, the Kid recruited the worshipful Dedrick brothers and even thrilled them with the gift of one of his ferrotype portraits. Handed down for generations, it is still the only certifiable photograph of William H. Bonney, age twenty.
Calling themselves the Rustlers, the night-riding gallants reportedly stole forty-eight Indian ponies from the idly guarded Mescalero Apache reservation and roamed up and down the Rio Pecos in the hostile cold of February selling them off to horse traders who could not resist a bargain. In March, it was claimed that the gang went after the livestock of Uncle John’s kid brothers, Jim and Pitzer Chisum, riding off with ten steers, ten bullocks, and two pregnant cows. Charlie Bowdre joined them for an eastward foray into Los Portales in May, stealing fifty-four cattle from a Canadian River ranchers’ association, steering them cross-country all the way to White Oaks and selling them for ten dollars a head in a deal that the Dedrick brothers had arranged. They thieved from a cattleman at Agua Azul, from a cattleman named Ellis near Stinking Springs, and even supposedly stole seven thoroughbreds from Uncle John Chisum, daring him to try to retrieve them.
But much of that accounting was Ash Upson’s and written insincerely in 1882, when he thought exaggeration, outrage, and garish lies would help Pat Garrett’s book sales. And Upson could have claimed in 1880 that the Kid was the source of any crime perpetrated in Lincoln County, from burglary to hijacking a train, and a lot of the Anglo citizens would have believed it. The Kid was not yet twenty-one, he still didn’t need to shave, and even wary people on meeting him remembered his cordial smile and fun-loving nature. Yet he was increasingly considered a fiend with a lust for blood by those seeking commerce and prosperity for New Mexico, for whom he seemed the impediment, the hitch in the get-along, the enemy of progress. And the Kid was not yet aware that there was a faction that desperately needed to have him done away with.
* * *
Heading up the hunt for a new sheriff was Joseph C. Lea, a former Confederate Army officer who’d fought alongside Cole Younger. Lea would later be called the father of Roswell, but in 1880 he was just the owner of its few buildings and a homestead ranch. Hearing praise of Pat Garrett from an excited Uncle John, Lea invited the saloonkeeper to stay in his own Roswell home just long enough to establish residence in Lincoln County. And John Chisum joined them on the homestead one evening for dinner, skirting political topics until Mrs. Lea took the dinner plates and cutlery away and the three men lit Chisum’s gifts of La Flor de Sanchez y Haya cigars.
“I guess it’s up to me to broach the subject first,” Chisum said. “We want to get your mind right on what our intentions are for our new sheriff.”
Garrett grayed the air in front to him with smoke before he asked, “Which are?”
“Well, we frankly need you to kill the Kid dead.”
Captain Lea used the rim of a saucer to carve the ash from his cigar and took a more lawyerly, brick-by-brick approach. “Uncle John and I have ambitions for Roswell and in fact for all of New Mexico. We foresee a time when most every major town will have a railway depot, a schoolhouse, even a doctor’s office. We want land that is platted and fenced. We want roads instead of cattle trails. We want factories and merchants and all the niceties of civilization.”
“What we got is wildness and anarchy,” Chisum said. “We got Kid Bonney on the loose taking whatever he pleases, whenever it suits him. Carefree, headlong, guns in every hand.”
Lea said, “The Kid’s days are numbered, and I imagine he knows that. We think of him and the frontier he inhabits as doomed, for—”
Interrupting Lea, Chisum spoke around the cigar in his mouth as he said, “Your job will be to uproot the Kid and his lackeys like chokeweeds in the garden patch!”
Pat Garrett rocked back on his dining room chair and quietly considered his fine cigar. With his Southern formality he said, “Elect me sheriff and I’ll be a cold and impersonal legal machine. Without sentiment or malice or resentment, I’ll carry out the law to the last letter.”
“Exactly what we hoped to hear,” said J. C. Lea.
* * *
At the Democratic Party’s nominating convention, Garrett was vaunted as a strict disciplinarian of impeccable morals who would persevere in an endless manhunt for the Kid and his ilk. Joseph Lea shouted in his convention speech, “Whosoever has encountered Pat Garrett will have noted how coolness, courage, and determination are written on his face! He alone shall bring law and order to the Territory and spell doom to the villains wreaking havoc on our lands!”
Running against him was Sheriff George Kimbrell, a former government scout and justice of the peace and an easygoing Republican who was thought to be too friendly to Billy and too timid in his prosecution of criminals. Even though both he and Garrett had Mexican wives, Kimbrell was far more liked by a native community that despised the wealthy associates of the Santa Fe Ring because of the thefts of their lands.
Louisiana-born George Curry would become governor of New Mexico in 1907, but in 1880 he was just nineteen and working for the firm of Dowlin & DeLaney, when the Kid, whom he didn’t know from Adam, rode onto the ranch and was invited to join Curry for dinner. In his twentieth-century autobiography, Curry recalled, “He asked me how I thought the election for sheriff would go in Las Tablas, our voting precinct. I told him our votes would be for Pat Garrett. He asked, bluntly, why I thought Garrett would win, and I replied just as bluntly that Garrett was a brave man who would arrest Billy the Kid or any other outlaw for whom a warrant was outstanding.”
The Kid told him, “You’re a good cook and a good fellow, George, but if you think Pat Garrett is going to carry this precinct for sheriff, you are a darn poor politician.”
The Kid was right about Las Tablas; Garrett got only one vote out of forty. But in Lincoln County’s final tally of its 499 votes for sheriff, Pat F. Garrett of Roswell got 320 and was elected.
Paulita Maxwell later recalled, “Nothing ever gave Fort Sumner such a shock of surprise as Garrett’s selection by the cattle interests to be sheriff. He was just a saloonkeeper, with no experience as a detective and no reputation as a gunfighter.”
The election was on November 2, 1880, and Sheriff Kimbrell would h
ave normally stayed in office until January 1, but with cattlemen providing him a financial incentive, Kimbrell appointed Garrett as his deputy and pretty much vacationed for the next two months.
A journalist interviewing the new deputy sheriff inquired if he thought he could quell New Mexico’s outlawry, and Garrett told him, “Yes, I can. Because outlaws all have one thing in common: sooner or later they find themselves wanting to get caught.”
* * *
Governor Lew Wallace’s novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ was published in New York by Harper & Brothers on November 12, and he was in the East, neglecting his government duties and also ignoring the telegraphed entreaties of Billy’s lawyer, Judge Ira Leonard, who vowed the Kid would cease his illegal activities if he was just given the clemency that the governor had promised.
Soon everything began turning sour.
About the time that Lew Wallace was getting the first accolades for his bestselling novel, the Kid and his gang were riding into Puerto de Luna, forty miles northwest of Fort Sumner. Arctic cold flooded over the West that November, and they all wore woolen scarves over their heads and ears and hunched under the wind with bandannas over their noses, snarling at the agonies of weather. Wanting food and heat, they hitched their horses and with their spurs jangling walked into the restaurant and general store of Alexander Grzelachowski (Gur-zel-a-hóf-ski). He was a jovial, overweight, fifty-six-year-old former Catholic priest from Gracina, Poland, who’d been invited to New Mexico by the archbishop of Santa Fe, Jean-Baptiste l’Amy. But after some years as pastor of a church in Las Vegas, “my laziness ate all my wits,” as Grzelachowski put it, and he left the priesthood. Billy now thought of Padre Polaco’s place as his lair in Puerto de Luna, and he felt like flaunting his friendship with an educated European to his gang. With him were Tom Folliard, Charlie Bowdre, and Billie Wilson. Of late Wilson and the Dedricks were getting away with passing Wilson’s counterfeit currency, buying the finest new guns that way and so outraging the stung businessmen Jimmy Dolan and Joseph LaRue that they wrote letters of complaint to officials in the United States Treasury, who thereafter named Wilson, the Dedricks, and, of course, William H. Bonney as “persons of interest.”
Wedged into the gang just that morning was twenty-six-year-old Dave Rudabaugh, originally from Illinois. Called Dirty Dave because of his aversion to soap and water, he was an offensive, ruthless, dark-bearded lout filling up the doorway in his slouch hat and rank goat-hair coat. Doc Holliday had gambled with him in Dodge City and was quoted as saying, “Dave Rudabaugh is an ignorant scoundrel! I disapprove of his very existence. I considered ending it myself on several occasions but self-control got the better of me.” Wyatt Earp wore out three horses hunting for him following his robbery of a Santa Fe Railroad construction camp, and after Rudabaugh’s failed train holdup in Kansas, Bat Masterson finally arrested him. But he was offered immunity if he squealed on his three partners in crime, and he did, avoiding a five-year sentence in Leavenworth prison. Ending up in Las Vegas, Rudabaugh hired on as a policeman just to seem an unlikely stagecoach robber, which he was, but after a friend was arrested for murder, Rudabaugh tried to jailbreak him, succeeding only in killing a much-loved deputy, Antonio Lino Valdez. So Dirty Dave was on the lam, found Billie Wilson in White Oaks, and Wilson in turn convinced the Kid they needed a fifth Rustler. Currying the Kid’s favor, Rudabaugh had said, “Real sorry Alex McSween was taken from us. When he was just getting into lawyering, he was a schoolteacher at the Miles farm in Eureka. Taught my little sister Ida. Nice man, she said.”
“Small world.”
Entering the Grzelachowski establishment, the five were greeted by a genial owner, who flung his arms wide and fondly grinned as he said, “Halo, Boleslaw! Jak się masz?” Hello, William! How are you?
“Świetnie,” the Kid said. Just fine. “Wanted to introduce you to my pals.”
Hands were shaken and names exchanged, and Padre Polaco asked the Kid, “Would you like to take something on the teeth? I have a kettle of borscht on the stove. Red beetroot, onion, garlic, very hearty.” Without waiting for a reply, he went to his kitchen cabinet and pulled down six Navajo bowls before calling out, “And some sweet Tokaji Aszú wine for the chilliness? I have.”
And Charlie called out, “You still a horse trader?”
Padre Polaco asked, “You need?”
Tom explained, “On the scout so much, we’re the ruination of animals.”
“I have horses.”
The Kid was warming himself in front of the fireplace and saw Billie Wilson dawdling near a display case. The Kid called to him, “You find a naked lady under that glass?”
“I’m shopping. The padre’s got some nice things.”
The Kid walked over and gazed at the jewelry as he stood beside Wilson. He retrieved a golden crucifix on a golden necklace and held it up to his gang. “Charlie, Tom. Would Paulita like this?”
“Hell if I know,” Tom said, and Charlie just shrugged.
The ex-priest asked, “Is she Catholic?”
“Well, she’s French and Spanish.”
“Then maybe.”
The Kid fitted the necklace inside its green velvet pocket and paid Grzelachowski the full price. The owner served the borscht, red wine, and hunks of stale bread to be soaked in the soup. Wrinkling his nose at Rudabaugh’s devastating odor, he told him, “I could find you in a room with no light.”
Rudabaugh thought it over for a few seconds and then concluded, “You sayin I stink?”
The Kid said, “He’s saying you have a strong personality.”
“Well, I guess that’s accurate.”
Charlie interrupted to praise the borscht, saying, “This here is in the nick of time. My belly’s been thinking my throat’s been cut.”
The former pastor asked while laying down cutlery, “And how are you and Manuela faring?”
“She’s with child. See, we got this here picture took.” Charlie was wearing a gray, caped Civil War sergeant’s coat that was called a surtout and he found in its inside pocket a ferrotype of himself sitting in his finest dancing clothes and, in the fashion of the time, displaying his six-gun and Winchester ’73, looking again like a gloomy Edgar Allan Poe as his unsmiling common-law wife stood next to him, one hand formally on his left shoulder and the other gently riding the balloon of her belly.
“Very laughly,” Grzelachowski said. “I am exceeding happiness for you.”
Tom craned his neck to see and said she didn’t look all that pregnant.
“Old picture. She’s as big as a wish now.”
“Is nine months the usual?” Tom asked.
“Oui, mon enfant,” said Padre Polaco as he sat across from the Kid. They ate in silence until he finally got out, “You have a birthday soon?”
“November twenty-third.”
“That’s today!”
“Then I have reached my majority.”
“Aged twenty-one,” Tom needlessly said.
Padre Polaco regarded Tom with pity, then returned to the Kid. “So, no clemency yet?”
“I got Judge Ira Leonard working on it. But the governor’s in New York and avoiding me. I’m heading to White Oaks from here to hash out some legalities with Ira.”
Wagging his finger but smiling, the ex-priest said, “You are afflicted with the general problem of disregarding the distinction between meum and tuum.”
The Kid frowned.
“Latin for ‘mine’ and ‘yours.’ Old seminary joke.” The padre lifted up and looked over the Kid’s head to Billie Wilson as he yelled, “Ho there! I’ll hang dogs on you if you steal from me!”
The Kid hated the fatherly whine in his own voice as he turned and asked Wilson, “Oh, wha’ja do?”
Padre Polaco rose from the rough-hewn table and rushed the petty thief.
“Nothin,” Wilson explained to the Kid. “I was just holdin it in my pocket. Seein if it fit. I got money.”
Padre Polaco forced his hand inside Wilson’s overcoat pocket an
d retrieved a Waltham watch in a gold case. “Shame on you!” he scolded.
Anticipating an uproar, Charlie said, “We better eat up, Tom.” They both began hurriedly spooning borscht and slurping down wine.
The Kid said, “You were gonna pay him for it, weren’t you? You just had more shopping to do?”
Wide-eyed with innocence, Wilson told the ex-priest, “Yes! My family’s festive and I have Christmas things to get!”
Padre Polaco examined the price tag. “Thirty-eight dollars. You have it?”
“Here,” Wilson said and found a folded hundred-dollar bill in his trousers.
The Kid sighed. “Don’t take it, Padre. It’s worthless.”
Grzelachowski squinted at the note in the lamplight and felt the texture of the paper before holding it over the hurricane lamp and letting the counterfeit bill brown and blacken and flame into ash.
“Hey!” Wilson said, but it was late and halfhearted.
“Enjoyed the dinner,” Tom said, getting up.
Rudabaugh was heading outside, but his odor would linger for days.
The Kid saw that no one else was volunteering to pay for their dinner, so with exasperation he said, “Here, let me get this,” and generously laid down five authentic two-dollar bills with Thomas Jefferson in the left oval and a vignette of the United States Capitol in the center.
“Dziękuję,” the owner told the Kid. Thank you.
“I’m really sorry about the fuss.”
“Yes, yes.” Padre Polaco smiled. “But all my customers bring me happiness. Some by coming, some by leaving.” And then he said like the gravest of teachers, “But I have a warning for you about your friends. ‘He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.’ ”
Exiting, Billie Wilson yelled, “This is a fine way to treat your dinner guests!”
Padre Polaco yelled back a Polish get-lost expression that in English would be “Oh, go stuff yourself with hay!”
* * *
Tying a woolen scarf over his skull and ears again and fixing his sugarloaf sombrero over it, the Kid adjusted his fine sable coat and got up on his latest horse. And then he heard hooting from the night of Grzelachowski’s corral as Wilson, Rudabaugh, and a what-the-hell Folliard urged four stallions, four geldings, four mares, and four fillies through the yanked-open gate using spurs to various hindquarters. Charlie Bowdre was overseeing the theft and sheepishly twisted in his saddle. “Won’t listen to me, them.”