Billy the Kid

by Robert M. Utley

  Meanwhile, Captain Carroll pushed the “Black Knights” without rest. With methodical persistence, he kept his patrols scouring the country and rounding up wanted men. By the end of March he had a dozen in custody, and a week later a newspaper reporter observed that the fort’s lockup had become “a ‘Bastille’ crowded with civil prisoners.”11

  Wallace squirmed over a painful dilemma. On the one hand, until citizens acted fearlessly as witnesses and jurors, the courts could not convict. On the other, until the courts convicted, citizens would not act fearlessly. In dread of retribution, witnesses to crimes refused to swear the affidavits that were legally required as a basis for the issue of arrest warrants. “The truth is,” confessed Wallace, “the people here are so intimidated that some days will have to [pass] before they can be screwed up to the point of making the necessary affidavits.” Bowing to the governor’s pleas, Colonel Hatch authorized the troops to make arrests without warrants, and some of the prisoners loudly protested their unlawful detention by the military. Lincoln’s only lawyer was kept busy preparing writs of habeas corpus.12

  Secure in their haven near San Patricio, Billy and Tom kept abreast of Wallace’s campaign with an absorption rooted in self-interest. Billy’s quick mind instantly focused on Wallace’s need. On March 13 he sat down to pen the first of several letters that one of his San Patricio friends carried to the harried governor.

  “I was present when Mr. Chapman was murdered and know who did it,” Billy wrote. “If it was arranged so that I could appear at court, I could give the desired information, but I have indictments against me for things that happened in the late Lincoln County War, and am afraid to give up because my enemies would kill me.” “If it is in your power to annul those indictments,” Billy suggested, “I hope you will do so, so as to give me a chance to explain.”

  Billy then concluded: “I have no wish to fight any more, indeed I have not raised an arm since your proclamation. As to my character I refer you to any of the citizens, for the majority of them are my friends and have been helping me all they could. I am called Kid Antrim, but Antrim is my stepfather’s name.”13

  Those may have been hollow words contrived to win the governor’s sympathy. More likely, as confirmed by his avowal to Sam Corbet, they expressed his true feeling at the moment. And a great many citizens would indeed have vouched for his character.

  Billy Bonney had embarked on a risky venture. In exchange for lifting the indictments against him, he offered himself as the one thing Wallace needed most: an eyewitness to murder who would testify in court. Billy hated Dolan, Evans, Mathews, and Campbell and would have enjoyed seeing them locked behind bars. In openly testifying against them, however, he placed his life at peril, the more so because he broke the peace accord concluded on the night of Chapman’s murder. That document specified death for any violator. That the other signatories were confined at Fort Stanton afforded some comfort, but not much.

  Not above bargaining with a nineteen-year-old outlaw, Wallace responded immediately. “Come to the house of old Squire Wilson,” he wrote on March 15, “at nine (9) o’clock next Monday night alone.” Billy should steal into town from the foothills on the south, Wallace instructed, and knock on the east door of Wilson’s jacal. The governor also touched on the two assurances Billy needed to enter into a bargain: immunity from prosecution and protection from reprisals. “I have authority to exempt you from prosecution if you will testify to what you say you know,” Wallace wrote. “The object of the meeting at Squire Wilson’s is to arrange the matter in a way to make your life safe. To do that the utmost secrecy is to be used. So come alone. Don’t tell anybody—not a living soul—where you are coming or the object. If you could trust Jesse Evans, you can trust me.”

  After dark on March 17, the governor and the justice of the peace sat tensely expectant in the candle-lit gloom of Wilson’s little dwelling near the courthouse. At the appointed hour the door vibrated with a firm knock.

  “Come in,” said Wallace.

  Billy entered warily, a Winchester in his left hand, a pistol in his right. “I was to meet the governor here,” he said. “Is the governor here?”

  Wallace rose, extended his hand, and invited the boy in. The three sat at a table, and Wallace explained his plan.14

  “Testify before the grand jury and the trial court and convict the murderer of Chapman,” Wallace proposed, “and I will let you go scott-free with a pardon in your pocket for all your own misdeeds.”

  “If I were to do what you ask,” replied Billy, “they would kill me.”

  No, answered Wallace, he would contrive a fake arrest that would look genuine to the world, then keep Billy in protective confinement. With the bargain sealed, Billy slipped out into the night.

  Billy could hardly have received more unsettling tidings than reached him at San Patricio the very next day, March 18. Jesse Evans and Billy Campbell had persuaded their guard to desert and, with his help, had broken out of the Fort Stanton lockup and lost themselves in the mountains. Even in protective custody, the Kid could readily visualize himself shot down by these two before he could relate his story to the grand jury. “Please tell you know who that I do not know what to do, now as those Prisoners have escaped,” he wrote to Squire Wilson on March 20.15

  On the same day, however, Billy followed this letter with a long message assuring Wallace that he would keep his part of the bargain. “But be sure to have men come that you can depend on,” he beseeched. “I am not afraid to die like a man fighting but I would not like to be killed like a dog unarmed.”

  He then offered detailed counsel on where to look for Evans and Campbell. “It is not my place to advise you,” he concluded, “but I am anxious to have them caught, and perhaps know how men hide from Soldiers, better than you.”

  The next day, March 21, Sheriff Kimball and a posse surrounded the house of one of San Patricio’s many Gutierrezes, a mile below town, and arrested Billy Bonney and Tom O’Folliard. Escorted to Lincoln, they were placed under guard in the home of Juan Patrón, next door to the Montaño store where Wallace lodged.

  That the Kid had not exaggerated in assuring Wallace that many citizens would vouch for him became clear several days later. In reporting the incident to Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, however, the patrician governor betrayed the condescension with which he looked not only on his prisoner but on the entire territory. “A precious specimen nick-named ‘The Kid,’” he wrote, “whom the Sheriff is holding here in the Plaza, as it is called, is an object of tender regard. I heard singing and music the other night; going to the door, I found the minstrels of the village actually serenading the fellow in his prison.”16

  Billy not only stood ready to testify in the Chapman case but also proved willing to explain the outlaw scene in general. In a long meeting with Wallace, he poured out explicit details of outlaw trails, hiding places, techniques, and above all personalities ranging all the way from Seven Rivers to Silver City. Once again he had broken the terms of the peace treaty of February 18.17

  Billy was soon joined in his “prison” by an old friend. Wallace had formed a militia company, the Lincoln County Rifles, and had sent it out with his list of culprits. Early in April the unit rode over to Fort Sumner to search for Charley Bowdre and Doc Scurlock, both under federal indictment in the Roberts killing. Bowdre got wind of the threat and fled, but Scurlock was seized, brought back to Lincoln, and confined with Billy Bonney.18

  Exactly what Wallace promised Billy seems to have been left vague in both their minds. In his letter to Billy, Wallace said that he could exempt him from prosecution, whereas in his memory of the meeting in Squire Wilson’s dwelling he offered a pardon. A pardon could have been granted at any time before or after trial. An exemption demanded more immediate action, before court convened.

  An exemption, moreover, did not lie within the governor’s power unless agreed to by the prosecuting attorney. As it turned out, Billy had more to fear from William L. Rynerson than from Evans a
nd Campbell, who prudently disappeared into Texas. A Dolan ally throughout the Lincoln County War, an overt partisan who thought nothing of subverting the law to his private interests, Rynerson could hardly be expected to view the Kid with compassion.

  To make matters worse, Wallace did not even remain in Lincoln for the spring term of court but instead returned to Santa Fe and, doubtless, Ben-Hur. A Las Vegas attorney, Ira Leonard, represented Wallace as an aide to Rynerson, who neither needed nor wanted an aide.

  Judge Bristol opened the proceedings on April 14. Fear and intimidation stalked witnesses, jurors, and even the judge. Partisans on both sides championed the old Dolan and McSween interests. Judge Bristol, anxious to get out of town, pushed the grand jury hard. He showed “the timidity of a child,” Leonard complained, “and stood in fear of the desperate characters.”19

  True to his word, Billy Bonney took the stand to name the slayers of Chapman. So did Tom O’Folliard, who had also witnessed the killing. The testimony identified both Campbell and Dolan as the killers and described the role of Evans, in court legalese, as to “incite, move, procure, aid, counsel, hire and command” them to commit the deed. Based on this testimony, the grand jury indicted Dolan and Campbell for murder and Evans as an accessory. Mathews escaped notice.20

  Apparently District Attorney Rynerson had allowed Governor Wallace to believe that, in exchange for turning state’s evidence, the Kid would be released from prosecution in the Brady killing. Rynerson reneged, however, prompting the Mesilla Independent’s comment that “considering the character of the man [Billy] the action was right in the premises.”21

  “He is bent on going for the Kid,” Ira Leonard wrote to Wallace of Rynerson’s posture, and “he is bent on pushing him to the wall. He is a Dolan man and is defending him by his conduct all he can.” Far from dropping the prosecution of Billy, the district attorney pressed the case vigorously. On Rynerson’s motion, Judge Bristol granted a change of venue to Doña Ana County, where jurors would be less likely to sympathize with the likable young fellow.22

  Despite Rynerson’s obstructionism, the grand jury spewed out indictments—some two hundred falling on fifty men. Dominated by former McSween followers, the jury took note chiefly of the offenses of Dolanites. Even Colonel Dudley, target of Sue McSween’s vendetta, found himself charged with arson in the burning of the McSween house.

  Only two people actually came to trial, and they went free. Judge Bristol had already released fifteen of the Stanton prisoners on writs of habeas corpus. Others who had been indicted, such as Evans and Campbell, were nowhere near Lincoln, and those who were in town pleaded the governor’s amnesty and had the charges quashed. A few who chose to fight, such as Dudley, Dolan, and Peppin, obtained changes of venue from Judge Bristol. All ultimately won acquittal or had the charges dropped by friendly prosecutors. Jimmy Dolan, a prime author of the war, slipped easily into a new life of respectability and became one of Lincoln County’s most honored citizens.

  Billy Bonney enjoyed no such official favor. By bearing witness against Dolan and his friends, the Kid had planted in Rynerson and even Bristol a fierce resolve to see him hang for the Brady killing. Even the favor of the governor could not offset the implacable hostility of these two pillars of the law.

  With Doc Scurlock, Billy “perambulated at leisure” around Lincoln, as the Independent complained. Technically under arrest, the Kid was allowed considerable latitude by a tolerant Sheriff Kimball, who knew the circumstances under which he had been taken into custody. “Kid and Scurlock are expected to walk off at any time,” observed the Mesilla News, “as little restraint is placed on these favorites of the governor.”23

  Billy tarried in Lincoln to aid in Sue McSween’s continuing crusade against Colonel Dudley, a cause in which he could participate wholeheartedly. The army had appointed a court of inquiry to look into Dudley’s actions in Lincoln on July 19, 1878, and Sue was busily assembling witnesses who would swear that soldiers bolstered Peppin’s posse in the siege of the McSween house and even helped set the house afire.

  The court began taking testimony at Fort Stanton on May 12, 1879. Governor Wallace led off as the first of more than sixty witnesses. Several, including Sue McSween, swore to the active participation of soldiers in the fighting. In testimony given on May 28, Billy Bonney described the breakout from the McSween house and contended that soldiers posted at the southwest corner of the Tunstall store fired at him and the others as they dashed to safety. A parade of witnesses dissented, and Dudley’s counsel, Henry Waldo, persuasively discredited the allegation, as well as the motives of those who had conceived it.24

  In particular he tore into Billy. Waldo was a master at sarcasm, and in his summation he wielded it brutally to demolish both the character and the testimony of Billy Bonney.

  “Then was brought forward,” he said contemptuously, “William Bonney, alias Antrim,’ alias ‘the Kid,’ a precocious criminal of the worst type, although hardly up to his majority.” Billy was the perpetrator of the “cowardly and atrocious assassinations” of Sheriff Brady and Andrew Roberts, Waldo pointed out, and “there were warrants enough for him on the 19th of July last to have plastered him from his head to his feet, yet he was lugged in to do service as a witness.”

  With allowance for hyperbole, that came close to the truth. Just as he signed the affidavit that Rob Widenmann probably composed for the Angel investigation, Billy now told the army judges what Sue McSween wanted them to hear.

  As the Dudley Court ground on through June to its conclusion—exoneration of Dudley—Billy Bonney faced another danger. Early in June, Judge Bristol convened the United States District Court in Mesilla. The U.S. marshal for New Mexico, John Sherman, received instructions to produce both the Kid and Scurlock to answer the charge of murdering Buckshot Roberts within a federal jurisdiction. Sherman procrastinated, but finally took steps to have the two “prisoners” escorted to Mesilla.25

  Billy Bonney could not have looked with optimism on the prospect of facing Judge Bristol again. He had every reason to feel disillusioned and disgruntled. He had struck a bargain with the governor of the territory, had risked his life to carry out his promise, yet had received nothing in return. The spring session of territorial court had left no doubt in his mind that Rynerson and Bristol intended to convict him of the murder of Sheriff Brady. Now he confronted the more immediate threat of a murder trial in federal court for the Roberts killing. However sincere the governor’s intentions, he had not lived up to his promise. He had not persuaded Rynerson to drop the territorial charges against Billy, and he had made no move to grant a pardon. The law seemed forgiving of everyone except Billy Bonney.

  On the night of June 17, 1879, with a sense of betrayal, Billy simply rode out of Lincoln. Doc Scurlock went along, while Sheriff Kimball looked the other way.26

  Billy spent the next few weeks in Las Vegas. According to charges later filed in district court there, on July 1 a person known only as “Kid” operated an unlawful monte gaming table. Billy Bonney loved monte and dealt it expertly, but neither the charges nor the arrest warrant ever caught up with the accused. He may have been Billy Bonney or another of the many “Kids” who peopled the frontier West.27

  In July 1879 Las Vegas offered an appealing setting for gamblers and every other variety of adventurer, confidence man, and criminal. On Independence Day the first train on the Santa Fe Railroad steamed into the “New Town” where the depot was located. Night and day Las Vegas throbbed with the raucous hilarity that marked the advance of all the transcontinental lines. Billy would have been drawn by the excitement and opportunity.

  Other testimony to Billy’s presence in Las Vegas came from his old friend Dr. Henry Hoyt. Now tending bar in one of the railhead community’s many saloons, Hoyt took Sunday dinner in late July at a popular hotel associated with the hot springs six miles northwest of town. Here, to his astonishment, he found himself seated next to Billy Bonney, who in turn introduced him to a companion, a “Mr. Howard.” Late
r, Billy confided that Mr. Howard was none other than the notorious outlaw Jesse James, traveling incognito.28

  By early August Billy was back around Lincoln, provoking Sheriff Kimball into halfhearted efforts to arrest him. On August 9, with an officer and fifteen men from Fort Stanton, Kimball tracked Billy down the Bonito Valley and cornered him in a cabin six miles below Lincoln. Surrounding the cabin in the darkness, they settled down to await daylight. But the resourceful Kid recalled a similarly desperate predicament in his past. As the Fort Stanton commander reported, “he escaped by climbing up a chimney, leaving his arms behind, and escaping under cover of night.” If he learned of the feat, Sheriff Whitehill of Silver City must have enjoyed a chuckle.29

  On another occasion, Billy slipped into Lincoln and went to Sue McSween’s house. He had heard that Frank Coe had come down from Colorado to retrieve his hay-cutting machine and was staying there. While Tom O’Folliard held the horses outside, Billy went to the door. Inside, Frank sawed his fiddle while Sue and a sergeant from Fort Stanton danced. Billy entered, confronted the soldier, and asked what he was doing there.

  “I guess you ought to know,” the soldier replied.

  “Well,” said the Kid, “why don’t you do something?”

  “We’re sent out,” the sergeant answered lamely, “but don’t have to do anything.”

  To break the tension, Frank began to fiddle again. “Kid went dancing around with his carbine in hand,” Coe remembered. “Had the whole room to dance in, but kept dancing around and over the Sergeant’s feet and Sergeant kept drawing them up under him. I thought there was going to be a kill and stopped playing, and said ‘Come here, Billy, I want to talk with you.’” As they stepped out the front door, a frightened sergeant quickly let himself out the back door and vanished.