Billy the Kid

by Robert M. Utley

  The Antrim-McCarty marriage is listed in the Santa Fe County Book of Marriages, A, and in the church’s record book of marriages performed by Reverend McFarland. Photocopies are in the Research Files, Mullin Collection, HHC. Henry and “Josie” McCarty are named as witnesses, together with members of the McFarland family.

  2. The astute and tenacious researcher who succeeded in connecting Indianapolis with Santa Fe via Kansas is Waldo Koop, Billy the Kid: Trail of a Kansas Legend (Kansas City: Kansas City Westerners, 1965). Important in this process was the work of Philip J. Rasch in tracking stepfather William Antrim and brother Joseph Antrim. See Rasch’s “A Man Named Antrim,” Los Angeles Westerners Brand Book 6 (1956): 48–54, and “The Quest for Joseph Antrim,” NOLA Quarterly 6 (July 1981): 13–17.

  3. The former theory is best set forth by Jack DeMattos, “The Search for Billy the Kid’s Roots—Is Over!” Real West 23 (January 1980): 20–25. The latter theory is advanced in Donald Cline, Alias Billy the Kid: The Man Behind the Legend (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1986), chapter 1. The problem is complicated by the sloppy record keeping of the times and by the superabundance, in New York and all other cities, of McCartys, McCarthys, and McCartneys named Patrick, Michael, Henry, Joseph, and Catherine. As a further complication, Billy’s use of the alias of William H. Bonney has sent trackers in pursuit of all the Bonneys who ever immigrated from Ireland. No theory yet advanced is without its holes, although advocates can plug most of them with arguments. Rather than convince, however, the arguments usually lead to more arguments. Students interested in following the esoterica of this immensely complex and unyielding puzzle will be rewarded by the works cited in these footnotes.

  The date usually given for Billy’s birth is November 23, 1859. It first appeared in a book that will be cited frequently in the following pages, both to deny its assertions and to serve as a source for my assertions. This book is Pat F. Garrett, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (Santa Fe: New Mexico Printing and Publishing Co., 1882). The history and significance of this book will be treated in chapter 18, but its prominent place in my notes requires a brief introduction here. Although Garrett is credited as author, much of the book was written by Marshall Ashmun Upson, a wandering journalist who was Roswell postmaster at the time of the Lincoln County War. Upson wrote the first fifteen chapters, Garrett the final eight. Upson’s contributions are mostly (but not exclusively) sensationalist fabrications. Garrett’s are excellent firsthand sources. Since generations of subsequent writers turned to Upson-Garrett for their facts, the Upson fantasies have become embedded in the literature of Billy the Kid. Any authentic life of the Kid, therefore, must confront, step by step as it unfolds, the Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. I have done this in my notes.

  The original edition of the Authentic Life, of course, is exceedingly scarce and commands a high price. There have been several subsequent editions, of which the most notable are one by the Macmillan Company, edited by Maurice G. Fulton (1927), and one by the University of Oklahoma Press, edited by Jeff C. Dykes (1954). The latter, now in its twelfth printing, is still available. Wherever the Authentic Life is cited in my notes, I have used the Dykes edition. The introductions of Fulton and of Dykes contain much of value relating to the book and its authors, with Dykes’s being the more informative and authoritative.

  4. Koop, Billy the Kid, 7–12. Koop unearthed the land records and newspaper items that documented the Antrim-McCarty stay in Wichita, shedding light on the past and present relationship of the two.

  5. The Colorado connection appears in Garrett, Authentic Life, 7. Also, Billy himself mentioned a brief residence in Denver to Frank Coe: El Paso Times, September 16, 1923. Finally, an old man generally believed to have been Billy’s brother, Joe, surfaced in Denver in 1928, and he said the family had lived for a time in Denver: Denver Post, April 1, 1928.

  6. The code is excellently treated in two books by C. L. Sonnichsen: “I’ll Die Before I’ll Run”: The Story of the Great Feuds of Texas (New York: Devin-Adair, 1962) and Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West, 2d ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1980). The theme is prevalent throughout the historical literature of Texas and New Mexico.

  7. Arizona Weekly Star (Tucson), November 11, 1880.

  8. Quoted in Conrad Keeler Naegle, “Silver City, New Mexico’s Frontier Paradox, 1870–1890” (MS, Santa Fe, n.d.), 15.

  9. Quoted in Mullin, Boyhood of Billy the Kid, 10.

  10. Mrs. Patience Glennon of Silver City, quoting her mother, English-woman Mary Richards, to Robert N. Mullin, May 15, 1952, quoted in ibid., 12. See also The Southwesterner (Columbus, N. Mex.), June 1962.

  11. Silver City Enterprise, September 18, 1874; Mining Life (Silver City, N. Mex.), September 19, 1874.

  12. Anthony B. Connor, interview in Independent (Silver City, N. Mex.), March 22, 1932. See also Connor to Maurice G. Fulton, April 29 and June 22, 1932, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC.

  13. Chauncey O. Truesdell, interview with Robert N. Mullin, Phoenix, Ariz., January 9, 1952, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC. For another Truesdell interview, see Roscoe G. Wilson, “Billy the Kid’s Youth is Topic for Argument,” Arizona Republic, December 30, 1951.

  14. Recollections of Henry Whitehill, in Notes by Mrs. Helen Wheaton, Silver City, from Gilbert Cureton Collection, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC.

  15. Connor, Independent, March 22, 1932.

  16. Harvey C. Whitehill, interview in Silver City Enterprise, January 3, 1902.

  17. Louis Abraham, in Notes by Mrs. Helen Wheaton, Silver City, from Gilbert Cureton Collection, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC.

  18. Whitehill, Mullin Collection, HHC.

  19. Truesdell, January 9, 1952, Mullin Collection, HHC. Truesdell remembered that Henry did not even participate in the theft but hid the loot at Shaffer’s request, which is also implied by the newspaper item quoted below.

  20. Connor, Independent, March 22, 1932.

  21. Whitehill, Mullin Collection, HHC.

  22. Silver City Enterprise, January 3, 1902.

  23. Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), September 26, 1875.

  2. THE ADOLESCENT

  1. Ash Upson crowded the first five chapters of the Authentic Life with wild tales of Billy’s adventures. They are unbelievable and without any confirming evidence. All may be confidently tossed on the trash heap of fable.

  A widely credited explanation of Billy’s activities in these two years was a long account given to a newspaper reporter by Thomas Dwyer, a New York policeman, shortly after the Kid’s death. Dwyer was certain that New Mexico’s celebrated bandit was Michael McCarty, a juvenile delinquent well known to the officers of the Oak Street Station. McCarty had disappeared in September 1876 after stabbing a friend to death in a drunken brawl. The Dwyer story illustrated a tendency that would become increasingly common with the passing years. Oldtimers remembered all manner of thrilling exploits by a nameless young fellow who they later decided must have been Billy the Kid.

  The Dwyer account, in the New York Sun, July 22, 1881, is the cornerstone of Donald Cline’s reconstruction not only of the two-year void but also of the Kid’s family origins. Alias Billy the Kid: The Man Behind the Legend (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1987), 14–21, 37–41. It requires us to throw out the Kid’s connections with Kansas and Indiana altogether and to believe that he fled from Silver City to New York rather than to Arizona. The brutal knifing described by Dwyer did occur, as documented by newspaper accounts reproduced by Cline. But to accept Michael McCarty as Henry Antrim badly strains logic, plausibility, reasonably well-established facts, and the evidence itself.

  2. For much of the contents of this chapter I am indebted to Jerry Weddle of Tucson, Arizona, whose diligent researches into the Kid’s Arizona years give promise of important results. Although Weddle will soon publish a book setting forth his findings, he has generously allowed me to make use of them. Employment records of the Hooker ranch establish Antrim’
s connection with Hooker but at this writing remain unavailable to researchers.

  3. According to Jerry Weddle, citing personal communications with the Hooker and the Whelan families.

  4. There are three short reminiscences by Wood, the first in 1911 and the others in the 1920s. Each contains details lacking in the others, but all three are internally consistent. These have generously been made available by Jerry Weddle.

  5. John Mackie’s background appears in two pension applications, in 1911 and 1912, unearthed by Jerry Weddle and made available to me. The shooting is recounted in Arizona Weekly Citizen (Tucson), September 25 and October 9, 1875.

  6. Miles L. Wood reminiscences, courtesy of Jerry Weddle.

  7. The complaint, February 16, 1877, details the circumstances of the theft. The Fort Grant post returns, November 1876, document Lewis Hartman’s pursuit of the thieves. Both documents were provided by Jerry Weddle. The apprehension of Antrim by the soldiers near Globe was related by storekeeper Pat Shanley and appears in Clara T. Woody and Milton L. Schwartz, Globe, Arizona (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1977), 31.

  8. Miles L. Wood reminiscences. Wood’s formal request to put the two in the post guardhouse, March 25, 1877, is in the Camp Grant Letters Received (hereafter LR), Record Group (hereafter RG) 98, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NARA). Both documents are courtesy of Jerry Weddle.

  9. Miles L. Wood reminiscences, courtesy of Jerry Weddle.

  10. J. Fred Denton, “Billy the Kid’s Friend Tells for First Time of Thrilling Incidents,” Tucson Daily Citizen, March 28, 1931.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Arizona Weekly Star (Tucson), August 23, 1877; Arizona Citizen (Tucson), August 25, 1877.

  13. Major C. E. Compton to U.S. Deputy Marshal W. J. Osborn, August 23, 1877, reproduced in Cline, Alias Billy the Kid, 51.

  14. Independent (Silver City, N. Mex.), March 22, 1932.

  15. The following is according to Ash Upson in Garrett, Authentic Life, 6, 8–9, 22–24. Although Upson’s tales of Henry’s escapades during this period are bogus, his description and characterization of the seventeen-year-old who reappeared in 1877 stem from personal acquaintance and find confirmation in the testimony of others who knew the boy.

  3. THE OUTLAW

  1. A solid history of Lincoln County is John P. Wilson, Merchants, Guns & Money: The Story of Lincoln County and Its Wars (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987).

  2. Robert M. Utley, High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), chapter 2.

  3. Las Vegas Gazette, November 25, 1875, quoted in William A. Keleher, The Fabulous Frontier: Twelve New Mexico Items (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962), 60.

  4. Philip J. Rasch, “The Pecos War,” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 29 (1956): 101–11. For Chisum, see Harwood P. Hinton, “John Simpson Chisum, 1877–84,” New Mexico Historical Review 31 (July 1956): 177–205; 31 (October 1956): 310–37; 32 (January 1957): 53–65.

  5. Upson’s role in Kid historiography is discussed in chapter 18. See also note 1 in chapter 2. Upson describes Roswell and its founder in a long letter to his father: Roswell, August 30, 1876, Fulton Collection, Box 11, Folder 6, Special Collections, University of Arizona Library, Tucson (hereafter UAL).

  6. Quoted in Milton W. Callon, Las Vegas, New Mexico. . . The Town That Wouldn’t Gamble (Las Vegas: Las Vegas Daily Optic, 1962), 116–17. See also Lynn W. Perrigo, Gateway to Glorieta: The History of Las Vegas, New Mexico (Boulder, Colo.: Pruett Press, 1982).

  7. James D. Shinkle, Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo Indian Reservation (Roswell, N. Mex.: Hall-Pourbough Press, 1965), 77–81; William A. Keleher, The Maxwell Land Grant: A New Mexico Item (Santa Fe: Rydal Press, 1942), 36–37.

  8. Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877. Carpenter’s identification furnishes the only known documentation for the Kid’s whereabouts before he turned up on the Pecos River about two weeks later. If Carpenter named the wrong man, we do not know where the Kid was or what he did in the weeks following the killing of Cahill unless we credit the wild tale concocted by Ash Upson for Garrett’s Authentic Life, which I am unwilling to do. Robert N. Mullin (The Boyhood of Billy the Kid [El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1967]: 18–19) does not think the Kid rode with the Evans gang during this period or any other. I do, for these reasons: (1) the Carpenter identification; (2) evidence cited below tying the Kid closely to Evans’s known whereabouts; (3) evidence cited in the next chapter making it plain that the Kid and Evans knew each other with considerable intimacy at the time of John H. Tunstall’s death three months later. There is no other time when the relationship could have taken root. Evans, Baker, and others of the bunch that stole the horses at Pass Coal Camp are named in the Independent, October 6, 1877.

  9. Mesilla Valley Independent, July 21, 1877. For Evans, see Grady E. McCright and James H. Powell, Jessie Evans: Lincoln County Badman (College Station, Texas: Creative Publishing Co., 1983); and Philip J. Rasch, “The Story of Jessie J. Evans,” Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 33 (1960): 108–21. For Kinney, see Philip J. Rasch, “John Kinney: King of the Rustlers,” English Westerners Brand Book 4 (October 1961): 10–12; Jack DeMattos, “John Kinney,” Real West 27 (February 1984): 20–25; and Robert N. Mullin, “Here Lies John Kinney,” Journal of Arizona History 14 (Autumn 1973): 223–42.

  10. Quoted in Philip J. Rasch, “Death at the Baile,” Potomac Westerners Corral Dust 6 (August 1961): 30. See also Rasch and DeMattos, “John Kinney.”

  11. Rasch, “Story of Jessie J. Evans,” 109.

  12. A. B. Connor to Maurice G. Fulton, April 29, 1932, Billy the Kid Binder, Mullin Collection, HHC: “The school kids used to call him Bonney, but why I don’t know.”

  13. As conceded in n. 8, the only documentary evidence that places Billy with the Evans gang at this time is Carpenter’s identification of him as one of the Pass Coal Camp thieves. But when Evans was on the lower Pecos in late October, so was Billy; and when Evans was in jail in Lincoln in November, Billy was nearby and, as we shall see, helped him escape from jail. I think it highly likely, therefore, that Billy rode across the mountains with the Evans gang and shared their adventures. The following account of those adventures is drawn from various news items in the Mesilla Valley Independent, October 6 and 13, 1877.

  The usual version of Billy’s journey to the Pecos is, of course, Upson’s in Garrett, Authentic Life, 36–44. In this tale, the Kid, with friend Tom O’Keefe, takes a direct route across the Sacramento and Guadalupe mountains, endures terrible hardships, engages in some fantastic Indian combats, loses his mount and becomes separated from his buddy, and finally lands, exhausted and footsore, at the Jones ranch near Seven Rivers. This story resembles all the other sensations that Upson’s creative pen attributed to Billy’s early life and cannot be taken any more seriously than the others. Tom O’Keefe is otherwise unknown to history.

  14. Mesilla Valley Independent, October 6, 1877.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Frank Coe, interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, N. Mex., August 14, 1927, HHC.

  17. I have dealt with the Murphy-Dolan establishment, known as “The House,” in greater depth in High Noon in Lincoln. For the connection between The House and The Boys, see pp. 29, 32–33. The “Fence Rail” letter appears in the Mesilla Valley Independent, October 13, 1877, along with a detailed account of the progress of The Boys from the Rio Grande to the summit above the Indian agency. The economics of federal beef contracts are authoritatively probed in Wilson, Merchants, Guns & Money, 58–60.

  18. Philip J. Rasch and Lee Myers, “The Tragedy of the Beckwiths,” English Westerners Brand Book 5 (July 1963): 1–6.

  19. Eve Ball, Ma’am Jones of the Pecos (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1969), tells the story of the Jones family. For the historian imbued with proper skepticism, this book poses a dilemma. On the one hand, Eve Ball obtained the story from the Jones boys (mostly Sam) in t
he 1940s and 1950s, and their recollections must be taken seriously. On the other hand, the story is presented in grossly romanticized fashion replete with contrived conversation. Separating the Jones boys and Eve Ball is impossible. I have used the book for color and characterizations, but not for events unless supported in other sources.

  Billy Bonney’s arrival at the Jones ranch in October 1877, related in Ball’s chapter 17, is a case in point. Billy’s presence there at this time is confirmed in other sources, notably the recollections of Lily Casey and her brother Robert, cited below, and I believe that he was in fact there. But the account of his arrival, presented chiefly in theatrical dialogue, strains credulity. He arrives horseless, broken-down, and with almost useless feet after the perilous crossing of the Guadalupe Mountains described so breathtakingly by Upson in Garrett’s Authentic Life. Ever since the first appearance of the Jones-Ball version (Eve Ball, “Billy Strikes the Pecos,” New Mexico Folklore Record 4 [1949–50]: 7–10), students have regarded it as substantiation of the Upson yarn. It seems more likely to me that the Upson account, published in 1882, colored the Joneses’ memory of Billy’s stay at the ranch. For her rendering of the story, Ball cites “almost identical accounts” of Bill, Sam, Frank, and Nib Jones. In 1877 these brothers were, respectively, fourteen, eight, six, and five years old. Given the mysterious workings of memory, one may easily reject this version without regarding the Joneses or Eve Ball as dishonest. The birth dates of all the Joneses are recorded in the family Bible; a copy is in the New Mexico Biographical Notes, Mullin Collection, HHC.