Billy the Kid

by Robert M. Utley

  Back at the ranch, after a wary approach from two directions, the posse discovered conditions as McCloskey had stated. Only Gauss remained. The nine horses, however, supplied an excuse for another move. They too had to be included in the attachment. Probably at Dolan’s suggestion, Mathews designated fourteen men and deputized Billy Morton, Dolan’s man from the Pecos, to lead a chase after Tunstall to retrieve the horses. Evans, Baker, and Hill made ready to go too. Mathews objected mildly, but Evans declared that he and his men had a right to go after their property, that Kid Antrim had their horses and they intended to get them back. “Hurry up boys,” exclaimed Morton impatiently, “my knife is sharp and I feel like scalping someone.” Off the subposse clattered on the road to Lincoln, with Evans, Baker, and Hill trailing.33

  Dusk had begun to fall when the Tunstall party crested a divide and started down a narrow gorge leading to the Ruidoso. Middleton and Bonney lagged several hundred yards in the rear. Ahead, the main group started a flock of wild turkeys, and Brewer and Widenmann veered from the trail up a steep-sided open slope on the left to see if some could be bagged. Tunstall remained on the trail with the horses.34

  As they topped the divide, Middleton and Bonney glimpsed a party of horsemen galloping up the trail behind them. Spurring their mounts, the two raced to alert their comrades, Middleton heading for Tunstall, Billy aiming for Brewer and Widenmann, who were about two hundred yards up the hillside from the trail. Bonney had almost reached his destination when the pursuers cleared the brow of the divide and, spotting the three men to their left front, opened fire. A bullet cracked between Brewer and Widenmann and sent them hurrying for cover. The treeless slope offered none, but higher up scrub timber and scattered boulders capped a hilltop. With the possemen angling off the trail in pursuit, the three made for this cover. En route, Middleton joined them, alone.

  To the rear, the possemen reined in as they reached the hillside just vacated by their quarry. They had caught sight of Tunstall and his horses on the trail below, and at once they turned down toward the new prize. Above, Billy and his friends had just reached their defensive position when they heard a burst of gunfire in the canyon below. “They’ve killed Tunstall,” said Middleton.

  Middleton had tried to save the Englishman. “I sung out to Tunstall to follow me,” Middleton later recalled. “He was on a good horse. He appeared to be very much excited and confused. I kept singing out to him for God’s sake to follow me. His last word was ‘What John! What John!’”35

  The killing took place in a patch of scrub timber about a hundred yards off the trail. The only witnesses were the killers themselves: Billy Morton, Jesse Evans, and Tom Hill. Morton explained to the rest of the posse that he had commanded Tunstall to surrender, only to be greeted by two shots fired from Tunstall’s pistol. All three had then returned the fire. Two bullets hit the Englishman, one in the chest and the other in the head, and he fell from his horse, dead. Another shot dropped the horse.

  As several of the possemen laid the body out next to the horse, they heard more shots fired. Someone brought Tunstall’s pistol to place with the corpse. The cylinder contained two empty cartridges. One of the men thought Tom Hill had fired the two shots.36

  Billy Morton’s explanation to his followers stood as the official version of Tunstall’s death. He had been killed while resisting arrest by a posse led by a legally designated deputy sheriff of Lincoln County. Neither Morton nor Hill got the chance to tell more about the shooting, and in subsequent testimony Evans swore that he had not even been present with the posse.37

  None of the posse felt like testing the hilltop defenses of Tunstall’s companions. Rounding up the nine horses, they returned to the Feliz. Jesse Evans or one of his sidekicks was heard to quip that Tunstall’s death was small loss, that he deserved to be killed.

  As night closed in, Billy Bonney and his three comrades mounted and made their way down the trail to the Ruidoso. Here they arranged for a party to come out the next day to find Tunstall and bring his body to Lincoln. Late that night they told their story to Alexander McSween and a house packed with men who had come to town in response to Tunstall’s appeals for help.38

  The killing of Tunstall touched off the Lincoln County War. None of the Englishman’s supporters believed that he had been shot while resisting arrest. Rather, they were certain that he had been murdered in cold blood by Dolan gunmen masquerading as officers of the law and his pistol fired twice in order to support Morton’s story.

  And in truth, whatever actually happened in that thicket, the killing has to be seen as murder. Even if the posse had been required to attach the nine horses—hardly an arguable proposition—a confrontation with Tunstall need not have occurred. Morton, Evans, and Hill rode past the horses to reach Tunstall, then chased him a hundred yards off the trail. Even if he pulled his pistol, even if he fired it, even if his assailants had not premeditated a killing, Tunstall was murdered.

  Billy Bonney’s role in this prelude to war was minor. He was a witness and a participant in momentous events but exerted little influence on their course or outcome. Other men, chiefly Widenmann and Brewer, did the thinking, the deciding, and the leading. Billy followed. He did what he was expected to do, as when he and Fred Waite backed Tunstall and Widenmann in the confrontation with Sheriff Brady on February 11. But Billy did nothing to make himself conspicuous and played no other part than simply one of the boys. With them as with the Evans gang, he was the Kid—if no longer a green adolescent, still no more than an apprentice adult.

  With the outbreak of war, the Kid would mature swiftly.

  5

  The Avenger

  The slaying of John Henry Tunstall profoundly affected Billy Bonney. Frank Coe recorded a revealing scene in a back room of the Tunstall store, as the dead man’s body was laid out on a table for embalming. “Kid walked up,” related Coe, “looked at him, and said, ‘I’ll get some of them before I die,’ and turned away.”1

  Billy’s actions in the few days following the killing betrayed the depth of his feeling. No longer was he the unobtrusive bystander. Suddenly he displayed a boldness, a truculence, and an initiative that made him one of the more conspicuous of the men operating out of the McSween house during the cold February days after the murder. Although still a follower, he took the first steps toward leadership.

  The top leader now was Alexander McSween. On the night of February 18, 1878, forty to fifty men had responded to Tunstall’s call. About midnight, however, Widenmann, Brewer, Middleton, Bonney, and Waite arrived with news of the Englishman’s fate, and the mantle passed to McSween.

  The lawyer had no stomach for an armed contest with Dolan. He preferred legal stratagems. The district judge, the district attorney, and the county sheriff had already shown their partiality for Dolan, and McSween could expect no cooperation from them. But Lincoln contained other officers of the law: the justice of the peace and the town constable. John B. Wilson, an easily influenced, barely literate old man of marginal intelligence, served as justice of the peace. Atanacio Martínez, of firm enough fiber but skeptical of the role McSween marked out for him, was constable. McSween’s scheme was to obtain warrants for the arrest of Tunstall’s killers from “Squire” Wilson and use the men in the McSween house, acting under Martínez’s authority, as a posse to serve the warrants.2

  Arrest warrants could not be issued unless supported by affidavits alleging crime. The next morning, therefore, McSween accompanied Dick Brewer, John Middleton, and Billy Bonney to Squire Wilson’s office. There the three men swore that on the day before William S. Morton, Jesse Evans, and a list of other offenders had “wounded & killed J. H. Tunstall contrary to the statute in such case made and provided and against the Peace & dignity of the Territory.” Named on the list of murderers were James J. Dolan, who in fact had remained with Mathews and other possemen at the Tunstall ranch, and the outlaw Frank Baker, whose worn-out horse had kept him out of the action.3

  While at Wilson’s office, McSween pre
pared an affidavit of his own to support still another warrant. Brady’s continued occupation of the Tunstall store rankled, and the lawyer had found a clever way to strike back. The previous day, probably alarmed by the gathering of men at the McSween house, the sheriff had called on Captain George A. Purington, the commanding officer at Fort Stanton, for a detachment of soldiers to protect him from harm. Thoughtlessly, Brady then authorized his men in the Tunstall store to provide a small amount of hay for the troopers’ horses. The hay belonged to Tunstall, not the county, and McSween charged Brady and his men with larceny.4

  While Wilson labored with the paperwork, Billy and as many as forty other McSween men found opportunity to express their rage. Sam Wortley, who ran a hotel and restaurant at the western edge of town, afforded a pretext for browbeating the occupiers of the Tunstall store. At noon on the nineteenth, he made his way down the street with dinner for the five men in the store. Billy Bonney and Fred Waite stepped forward to bar the way and ordered Wortley to return without delivering the meal. Seeing James Longwell watching from the door of the store, Billy then turned and threw down his Winchester on the posseman. “Turn loose you sons-of-bitches, we will give you a game,” shouted Billy. Longwell retreated inside, and he and his men barricaded the doors and windows. Billy and Fred, however, drew off without provoking a fight.5

  Thanks to Justice Wilson’s helpful cooperation, Constable Martínez received warrants for the apprehension of five outlaws and twelve members of the Mathews posse for murder and of Sheriff Brady and the five men in the Tunstall store for larceny. The constable had some understandable reservations about the task assigned him, particularly the arrest of the county sheriff and twenty-two men acting under his legal authority as officers of the law. But McSween’s formidable and determined throng supplied a powerful impetus to cooperate.

  Unexpectedly, Rob Widenmann came to the rescue. He had ridden to Fort Stanton to break the news of Tunstall’s death. During the night of the nineteenth someone brought word to the fort that Jesse Evans was thought to be in Lincoln. Still a deputy U.S. marshal and still bearing the federal warrants for Evans and others for stealing Indian horses, Widenmann thought he could now make a better showing than he had at the Tunstall ranch on the thirteenth. Captain Purington had standing orders to furnish military aid for this purpose if Widenmann asked for it. Before dawn on the twentieth, therefore, Rob showed up in Lincoln with Lieutenant Millard F. Goodwin and a posse of thirty black cavalrymen.6

  Martínez had meanwhile already organized his own posse from among the men at the McSween house. It numbered at least eighteen, including Bonney, Brewer, Waite, Middleton, and the Coe cousins.7

  Widenmann’s little army provided a convenient screen for Martínez’s posse. Before dawn on the twentieth, looking for Evans, the soldiers invaded the Dolan store and conducted a thorough search. Martínez and his men followed and carried out their own search. Finding nothing, the two posses proceeded down the street to the Tunstall store to repeat the operation.

  Alerted by a commotion in front of the store, Jim Longwell looked out to see both soldiers and civilians gathering in the predawn gloom. He noticed Widenmann, rapped on the window to catch his attention, and asked what was up.

  “You will find out damn quick,” Rob replied.

  Longwell then recognized Lieutenant Goodwin, leaned his Winchester against the wall, and went outside. The officer explained that the soldiers had come to town to help the deputy U.S. marshal find Jesse Evans and his cohorts, who were thought to be hiding in the Tunstall store. Longwell denied that Evans had been in the store and invited Goodwin to search it. The search turned up no sign of Evans.

  As the soldiers filed out of the store, Martínez and his men burst in. Surprised, facing an imposing array of Winchesters pointed at them, Longwell’s men quickly surrendered. Martínez produced his larceny warrant, had the prisoners disarmed, and marched them down the street to the cellar jail. Later, after Brady had arrived from his home east of town, the posse seized him too and hauled all six before Justice Wilson for arraignment. Wilson discharged Longwell and his companions but bound over Brady for appearance before the district court, with bond set at two hundred dollars. The McSween forces now had possession of the Tunstall store, and they never relinquished it.8

  Sometime during the twentieth, Captain Purington rode down from Fort Stanton to investigate the crisis in Lincoln. A huge man with white hair and mustache that made him look two decades older than his thirty-nine years, he was a plodding mediocrity. He talked with McSween and Brady and quickly sized up the McSween crowd as a mob, maddened by the killing of Tunstall and unrestrained by legal niceties in seeking vengeance. The lives of Brady, Dolan, and Riley, he decided, “would not be worth a farthing if turned over to the McSween party.” As he admitted the next day in a letter to Judge Warren Bristol, “I hardly know what to do.” He left Lieutenant Goodwin and his troopers in Lincoln with the delicate mission of trying to keep the peace without interfering with the civil authorities.9

  Goodwin, who also regarded the Martínez posse as no better than a mob, felt that he had been duped into using his soldiers for an improper purpose. He complained bitterly to Widenmann, who apologized. Goodwin also reproached Martínez, who replied, according to the lieutenant, that he did not want to serve the warrants, “but was told by Antrim ‘Kid’ and others at McSween’s house that if he did not serve them they would kill him.”10

  Dolan, Mathews, and others whose names appeared on Martínez’s murder warrant had gathered with Brady in the Dolan store. Caught up in the frenzy, Widenmann asked Goodwin to take his soldiers back to the fort and let the two sides fight it out. Goodwin refused. Widenmann then inquired what the lieutenant would do if an attempt were made to arrest the culprits in the Dolan store. Goodwin answered that he could not interfere with civil authorities but that he considered McSween’s followers a mob whose actions would lead to bloodshed. Therefore, he would have to post his soldiers between the two factions, which he did by deploying them at the Dolan store.11

  Widenmann probably came up with the solution to this dilemma: attempt the arrest without the backing of the “mob.” If only Martínez and a couple of men entered the Dolan store, the soldiers could not meddle without opening themselves to charges of obstructing a civil officer in the discharge of his duty. The constable could not have had much enthusiasm for this daring scheme, but once again threats against his life probably spurred him to his duty, as suggested by his deputizing Billy Bonney and Fred Waite to accompany him into the enemy’s lair. The presence of soldiers outside the store could be expected to restrain Brady and his men from extreme measures, but even so, considering the temper of both sides on this day, the plan bordered on the foolhardy. It shows how staunch was the Kid’s determination to avenge the death of Tunstall.

  Fearlessly, Martínez and his two deputies barged into the Dolan store. Inside, they confronted the same spectacle that had greeted Longwell and his men at the Tunstall store earlier in the day: a battery of Winchester rifles trained on their chests. Relieving the invaders of their arms, Brady asked their business. Martínez pulled out his warrant and began to read it. The sheriff interrupted to declare that the men named happened to be his posse, that no one was going to arrest them, and that anyway he did not recognize the authority of Justice Wilson to issue arrest warrants. Thereupon the men in the store “cursed and abused” the three interlopers. After a few hours they released the constable and, without returning his arms, sent him away. But Bonney and Waite remained prisoners. Widenmann’s grand design had collapsed, as he might have expected.12

  With the Dolan forces holding two of McSween’s men, tensions remained high through the night and into the next day. But the presence of Lieutenant Goodwin and his cavalrymen kept the conflict from exploding. Even so, during the night someone fired a shot that killed a cavalry horse. The next day, Captain Purington sent an infantry detachment to Lincoln to bolster the cavalry.13

  February 21 passed quietly, a
s the townspeople gathered to bury John Henry Tunstall in the vacant lot east of his store. Reverend Taylor F. Ealy, a Presbyterian divine who had arrived only two days earlier to bring the true word to heathens and Catholics, preached the funeral sermon. Squire Wilson translated for the Hispanics. In the absence of Sue McSween, who was in the East, Mrs. Ealy played Sue’s organ, carried to the gravesite for the occasion.

  After the funeral, the citizens gathered in a public meeting to discuss the tribulations that had overtaken their community. Probate Judge Florencio Gonzalez headed a committee of four charged with calling on Sheriff Brady to learn why he had seized Martínez, Bonney, and Waite without legal process and to see if some way could be found to end the law’s harassment of McSween. At once, the four men trooped down the street to the Dolan store and confronted Brady, who had no difficulty recognizing them as spokesmen for the other side. Curtly, the sheriff dismissed the question about the constable and his two aides with the answer that he had taken them prisoner because he had the power. The committeemen, who included merchants José Montaño and Isaac Ellis, then offered their own property in an amount double the bond specified by the court if Brady would call off the attachment that had produced the crisis. Brady refused, but after they left he did free Billy Bonney and Fred Waite, after thirty hours of imprisonment, though without returning their arms. Billy would not quickly forget, or forgive, his humiliation at the hands of Brady and his associates.14