2. Main Street in Silver City, New Mexico, in the 1870s. Young Henry Antrim spent two years here, 1873–75, before falling afoul of the law, squirming up the chimney and out of the local jail, and vanishing into Arizona. (Mullin Collection, Haley History Center)
3. Lincoln, New Mexico, scene of Billy’s coming of age in the Lincoln County War. Although taken about 1885, this view portrays the town much as it appeared in 1878. The Dolan store, later the county courthouse, is in the foreground, the Wortley Hotel is hidden in the trees across the street, and the Tunstall store is the building with the pitched roof in the right center. (Museum of New Mexico)
4. The U.S. Army post of Fort Stanton sprawled on the banks of the Rio Bonito nine miles above Lincoln. Although maintained to keep watch on the Mescalero Apache Indians, it played an important role in the Lincoln County War. On July 19, 1878, Colonel Dudley’s Fort Stanton troops intervened decisively in the climactic battle for Lincoln. (National Archives)
5. Frederick T. Waite. A Chickasaw from Indian Territory, Fred Waite was the Kid’s closest friend during the Lincoln County War. The two had planned to take up farming on the Peñasco, but the outbreak of war prevented the partnership. Later, Waite returned to the Indian Territory and led a quiet and useful life. (Special Collections, University of Arizona Library)
6. Charles and Manuela Bowdre. With Doc Scurlock, Charley farmed on the Ruidoso until getting caught up in the Lincoln County War. At Blazer’s Mills he fired the fatal bullet into the groin of Buckshot Roberts. After the war Bowdre rode with the Kid out of Fort Sumner but also tried to break his outlaw ties and lead an honest life. At Stinking Springs, Pat Garrett’s bullet ended Charley’s dilemma. (Museum of New Mexico)
7. Thomas O’Folliard. At sixteen, Tom came up from Texas in time to participate in the final scenes of the Lincoln County War. With the Kid he escaped from the burning McSween house and then became his worshipful sidekick, happy even to hold his horse during nocturnal adventures with eager paramours. Tom died in front of Pat Garrett’s Winchester at Fort Sumner in December 1880. (Museum of New Mexico)
8. John H. Tunstall and Alexander A. McSween. The young Englishman, Tunstall, teamed up with Scotsman McSween, Lincoln’s only lawyer, to challenge the mercantile monopoly imposed on Lincoln County by Lawrence Murphy and his protégés, James J. Dolan and John H. Riley. (Special Collections, University of Arizona Library)
9. Jimmy Dolan stands beside his mentor, Murphy.
Johnny Riley shrank from gunfire but was adept at devious dirty work.
Dolan henchman Jacob B. Mathews led the posse that killed Tunstall. Mathews also shot the Kid in the thigh during the Brady assassination and testified in his murder trial. Understandably, Billy had no love for Mathews. (Mullin Collection, Haley History Center)
10. A veteran soldier and competent lawman, Sheriff William Brady favored the Murphy-Dolan side in the Lincoln County War. On April 1, 1878, Regulators gunned him down in the center of Lincoln’s only street, escalating the war and ultimately gaining the Kid a murder conviction. (Special Collections, University of Arizona Library)
11. Blazer’s Mills, scene of the classic Old West shootout that took the lives of Dick Brewer and Buckshot Roberts. The house in the right center was the focus of the battle. This picture was taken in 1884. (Special Collections, University of Arizona Library)
12. Tunstall’s foreman, Richard Brewer, served as first captain of the Regulators, until Buckshot Roberts blew his brains out at Blazer’s Mills. (Special Collections, University of Arizona Library)
13. Iowa dentist Joseph H. Blazer established a sawmill and gristmill at South Fork at the close of the Civil War. His big house on the Tularosa River provided the battleground for the gunfight between Dick Brewer’s Regulators and Buckshot Roberts. (Special Collections, University of Arizona Library)
14. Lieutenant Colonel Nathan A. M. Dudley, Fort Stanton’s pompous and bombastic commanding officer, steered an erratic course in the Lincoln County War. His appearance in Lincoln on July 19, 1878, led to the defeat of the McSween forces. (Collections of the Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pa.)
15. Robert Beckwith, son of patriarch Hugh Beckwith of Seven Rivers, led sheriff’s possemen into McSween’s backyard on the night of July 19, 1878, only to fall with a fatal bullet in his left eye. (Mullin Collection, Haley History Center)
16. Governor Lew Wallace, sent to New Mexico to end the Lincoln County War, proved more interested in completing his novel, Ben-Hur. His unfulfilled bargain with the Kid contributed to the boy’s drift toward outlawry. (Museum of New Mexico)
17. Judge Warren Bristol presided over the Third Judicial District Court. Although partial to the Dolan cause in the Lincoln County War, he was easily frightened by the gunmen of both sides. In April 1881 he sentenced the Kid to be hanged for the murder of Sheriff Brady. (Museum of New Mexico)
18. John Simpson Chisum, the “cattle king of New Mexico.” Chisum favored the McSween cause in the Lincoln County War but did not, as the Kid later insisted, promise Billy wages for his service as a McSween gunman. Nonetheless, Billy blamed Chisum for all his troubles. (Special Collections, University of Arizona Library)
19. In the Texas Panhandle in the autumn of 1878 the Kid formed a close friendship with Dr. Henry Hoyt, later to pursue a distinguished medical career. This bill of sale, in the Kid’s handwriting, legalized his gift to Hoyt of a sorrel horse. (Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas)
20. One of Billy’s outlaw associates was Dave Rudabaugh, shown here in 1886 after citizens of Parral, Mexico, separated his head from the rest of his body. (Mullin Collection, Haley History Center)
21. A big, muscular bully, Bob Olinger fought against the McSween forces in the Lincoln County War. As a deputy sheriff, he died when Billy the Kid, escaping from confinement, blasted him in the face and chest with his own shotgun. (Special Collections, University of Arizona Library)
22. The Kid became acquainted with Godfrey Gauss when the fatherly old German was cook at the Tunstall ranch. On April 28, 1881, Gauss was in the courthouse yard in Lincoln and helped Billy make good his escape. (Mullin Collection, Haley History Center)
23. Lincoln County Courthouse, formerly the Dolan store, scene of Billy the Kid’s spectacular breakout on April 28, 1881. Bob Olinger entered the gate to the left of the balcony and was shot by the Kid from the upstairs side window. Later, Billy harangued townspeople from the balcony in front, then rode out of town. In February 1878, at the outbreak of the Lincoln County War, Billy and Fred Waite were held here for almost two days by Sheriff Brady and his possemen. (Mullin Collection, Haley History Center)
24. Pat Garrett and John William Poe (seated) pose with a later deputy, Jim Brent. On July 14, 1881, Garrett and Poe, with Tip McKinney, ended the outlaw career of Billy the Kid.
The shooting took place in the Maxwell house at old Fort Sumner. Garrett was in Pete Maxwell’s bedroom, the corner room in the foreground, when the Kid entered and was gunned down. (Mullin Collection, Haley History Center)
25. Marshall Ashmun Upson. A wandering journalist who became acquainted with the Kid while serving as Roswell postmaster, Ash Upson ghosted Pat Garrett’s Authentic Life of Billy the Kid and thus contributed enormously to the legend that bloomed after Garrett killed Billy. (Special Collections, University of Arizona Library)
11
The Bargain
Billy Bonney returned to Lincoln early in December 1878 with a vague notion of squaring himself with the law and going straight. Only ten months earlier he and Fred Waite had almost settled on their own spread on the upper Peñasco, but Tunstall’s murder had intervened. Now that the Regulators had fallen apart, Billy had no close personal attachments beyond Tom O’Folliard. Constantly dodging the law was nerve-wracking, and after the danger and tumult of war a quiet farm of his own may have held momentary appeal. No one else had been punished for the excesses of the Lincoln County War, so why sho
uld he be? As he told his friend Sam Corbet, he was tired of fighting, wanted to stand his trial, and did not want to have to run from the Dolan outfit and the civil officers any longer.1
In Billy’s absence from Lincoln, however, the old McSween-Dolan hostilities had not been laid to rest. In November, in fact, they had flared anew with the return of Sue McSween from a two-month stay in Las Vegas. With her came Huston Chapman, an excitable, one-armed lawyer who saw every issue in apocalyptic form. Together, they set out to bring Colonel Dudley to justice for the death of Alexander McSween. This crusade, acting on Dudley’s volcanic temperament, stirred dread of new outbreaks of violence. Chapman in particular bred anxiety. He was “a ‘rule or ruin’ sort of fellow,” said Ben Ellis, “whom nobody liked.”2
Other developments had occurred during Billy’s Texas sojourn that bore on the new tensions. The federal investigator, Frank Warner Angel, had turned in a report damning to the administration of Governor Axtell. To restore order in the territory and credibility to its government, President Rutherford B. Hayes had named a new governor. He was Lew Wallace of Indiana, Civil War general, lawyer, politician, philosopher, musician, artist, sportsman, and rising literary star.
Governor Wallace had taken two steps toward ending the troubles in Lincoln County. Although he wanted the president to proclaim martial law, he had to settle for a proclamation of insurrection. This laid the constitutional groundwork to employ the army in suppressing the “insurrection,” and for the first time since June, Colonel Dudley’s soldiers could act as military posses for the civil authorities. Wallace had followed with a proclamation of his own, declaring an end to the disorders in Lincoln County and extending a “general pardon” to all offenders not already indicted by a grand jury.
Both documents contained flaws. The president’s proclamation, while making policemen out of soldiers, stopped short of martial law and left the courts in civil hands. Witnesses, jurors, and indeed the judge himself remained in terror of both factions and shrank from forceful measures. Why arrest anyone, asked army officers, if the courts would not convict? The governor’s proclamation declared a peace that did not exist, and his amnesty invited the return of dangerous men who had fled the country rather than risk military arrest.
While aggravating the stresses in Lincoln County, Wallace’s proclamation did not lift the cloud from Billy Bonney. The “general pardon” applied only to men who had not been indicted. Billy stood under two indictments—territorial for the murder of Sheriff Brady and federal for the murder of Buckshot Roberts.
For the time being, Billy ran little risk of arrest. Peppin had ceased to function as sheriff months earlier and had been defeated in the November election. The new sheriff, George Kimball, did not immediately qualify to replace Peppin, which left law enforcement incapacitated until early in 1879.
With Chapman keeping up a ceaseless agitation, tempers ran high, and people feared another explosion. Except for Billy and Tom O’Folliard, most of the “iron clads” had left the country, but many who had ridden as Regulators remained. On the other side were Dolan, Billy Mathews, the ubiquitous Jesse Evans, and a newcomer, Billy Campbell. A wandering cowboy, Campbell was a fierce-looking man with a huge brown mustache. His disposition, ill-tempered and thoroughly mean, matched his appearance.
As Billy had told Sam Corbet, he did not want to fight Dolan and the law both, a sentiment given special force by the advent of the steady, competent Kimball as sheriff. Early on February 18, 1879, exactly a year after Tunstall’s death, Billy put out a peace feeler, sending a message to a Dolan adherent at Fort Stanton asking whether the Dolan people proposed war or peace. The reply came back that they would come to Lincoln for a parley.3
That night the two sides faced each other from behind adobe walls on opposite sides of the street. Fifteen or twenty men had gathered, but only about half came as belligerents. Backing Billy were Tom O’Folliard, Joe Bowers, and Yginio Salazar, now recovered from the wounds received in McSween’s backyard on July 19. Dolan headed the opposition, backed by Campbell, Evans, and Mathews.
Hard words from Jesse Evans almost provoked a gunfight. He declared that the Kid could not be dealt with and would have to be killed on the spot. Billy replied that they had met to make peace, and he did not care to begin the negotiations with a fight. As tempers cooled, the men left their barricades and gathered in the street. A few minutes of dickering produced agreement: no one on either side would kill anyone on the other, or testify against him in court, without first withdrawing from the treaty; and anyone who violated the agreement would be executed. Amid general handshaking, they reduced the terms to writing and signed the document.4
With peace declared, the uneasy friends embarked on a boozy celebration. Noisily, and growing drunker with each stop, they staggered from one drinking place to another. About 10:30 P.M., lurching up the dark street in front of the courthouse, they chanced to meet Huston Chapman, unarmed and his face swathed in bandages to ease the pain of a severe toothache. Billy, coolly sober in contrast to the others, watched the scene unfold.
Campbell challenged the lawyer and asked his name.
“My name is Chapman,” was the reply.
“Then you dance,” commanded Campbell, drawing his pistol and shoving it against Chapman’s chest.
He did not propose to dance for a drunken crowd, answered the lawyer, adding, “Am I talking to Mr. Dolan?”
“No,” interjected Jesse Evans, “but you are talking to a damned good friend of his.”
Dolan, standing about ten feet behind Chapman, drew his pistol and drunkenly fired a shot into the street. At the report, Campbell’s trigger finger jerked and the revolver’s muzzle exploded into Chapman’s chest.
“My God, I am killed,” he exclaimed as he slumped to the ground, his clothing ablaze from the powder flash.
Chapman’s killing did not dampen the revelry. Leaving his body burning in the street, the celebrants made for Cullum’s eatery. Over an oyster supper, Dolan and Campbell decided that someone should return to place a pistol in Chapman’s hand so that the killing could be explained as self-defense. Billy, anxious to part with the group, volunteered. Taking Campbell’s pistol, he went outside, found his horse, and rode out of town.5
Aside from getting implicated in still another murder, Billy had good reason to leave town. Sheriff Kimball had spotted him earlier in the day and had gone to Fort Stanton for a military posse to aid in his arrest. Accompanied by a lieutenant and twenty cavalrymen, Kimball returned to Lincoln shortly before midnight. They searched the town without finding Billy, but they did come across Chapman’s corpse, his clothing in ashes and his upper body severely burned. They carried it to the courthouse.6
Whether Chapman’s death was deliberate murder or simply a drunken accident stirred heated debate at the time and has yet to be definitively resolved. Years later one of the bystanders recalled it in terms that ring true for the time and place. When ordered to dance, he said, Chapman refused, “so one of the boys shot him through the heart and he fell over against me, dead. There was really no malice in this shooting. Life was held lightly down there in those days.”7
The killing of Huston Chapman whipped up intense excitement among Lincoln’s residents, who feared that it signaled a fresh burst of violence. They applauded Colonel Dudley’s prompt response to their appeal for protection and drew comfort from the presence of a detail of soldiers that he stationed in Lincoln. With even more relief they greeted the news that the governor himself was finally coming to Lincoln.
Lew Wallace had no sooner taken the oath of office the previous October 1 than he had vowed to go to Lincoln and investigate in person. He had procrastinated ever since. He put forth unconvincing excuses to explain the delay, but the truth probably lay in a literary project in which he had become deeply immersed. It was a sweeping saga of biblical times, and night after night he withdrew to the inner recesses of the governor’s palace to spin the fictional adventures of a hero he had named Ben-Hur. Not unt
il the blazing corpse of Huston Chapman nudged aside Ben-Hur did Lew Wallace make good on his promise.
Once in Lincoln, which he reached on March 5, the governor moved swiftly to reestablish public confidence in the government. As a first step, he got rid of the troublesome Colonel Dudley. Colonel Edward Hatch, military commander in New Mexico, had accompanied Wallace from Santa Fe and now yielded to his insistence that Dudley had become so enmeshed in local factionalism as to destroy his usefulness. On March 8, triggering a predictable cry of outrage, Hatch relieved Dudley of the command of Fort Stanton.8
The new commander, Captain Henry Carroll, proved much more compliant. On March 11, after quizzing Justice Wilson at length, Wallace furnished Carroll with a list of thirty-five names of men who should be arrested and brought into court. Most could go free simply by pleading the governor’s amnesty, but not Bonney, Waite, Bowdre, and other “iron clads” who had already been indicted. “Push the ‘Black Knights’ without rest,” Wallace urged Carroll, who probably puzzled over the governor’s medieval romanticism.9
The governor especially wanted the men involved in the Chapman killing. This had occurred after the amnesty proclamation, and their conviction would go a long way toward reviving public faith in the law and the courts. He had heard that Billy Bonney and Tom O’Folliard were at Las Tablas—“Board Town”—some twenty miles north of Lincoln and that Dolan, Evans, and Campbell were at Lawrence Murphy’s old ranch thirty miles west of Lincoln. At Wallace’s request, Colonel Hatch sent detachments to find the culprits. Las Tablas failed to yield the Kid and O’Folliard, but the troopers returned with Evans, Campbell, and Mathews. Dolan too fell into military hands, and the four were confined at Fort Stanton.10
Billy the Kid Page 13