Billy the Kid
Page 30
22. Las Vegas Gazette, December 28, 1880.
23. Garrett makes no reference to this incident. East tells the story both in his Haley interview and his letter to Charley Siringo. Bousman noted: “Mason said, ‘Now Pat, let’s kill the sons-a-bitches.’ We threw down on him and said, ‘You dirty son-of-a-bitch, just try that and we’ll cut you in two and Pat too.’”
24. Rudulph, “Los Bilitos,” 214.
25. East to Siringo, May 1, 1920, in Siringo, History of “Billy the Kid,” 105.
26. East to Siringo, April 20, 1920, in ibid., 105–7. East also tells the story in East to William H. Burges, Douglas, Ariz., May 20, 1926, Research Files, Folder labeled “Saga of Billy the Kid,” Mullin Collection, HHC. Probably because Paulita was still alive and denied any liaison with the Kid, East’s letter to Siringo, as printed, named her Dulcinea Toboso. The unpublished letter to Burges used correct names.
27. Rudulph, “Los Bilitos,” 214; East to Siringo, May 1, 1920, in Siringo, History of “Billy the Kid,” 97–105; Louis P. Bousman, interviews with J. Evetts Haley, September 7 and October 23, 1934, HHC.
28. Lea to Wallace, Roswell, December 24, 1880, Ritch Collection, HL, Microfilm Reel 9 in NMSRCA.
29. As previously mentioned, Garrett’s chronology is flawed, as are those of almost all other sources and commentators. Garrett has the posse and prisoners leaving the Wilcox-Brazil ranch for Las Vegas immediately after the surrender, spending the night neither at the ranch nor in Fort Sumner but reaching Puerto de Luna on Christmas afternoon. Since he also dates the surrender on December 22, this leaves two and one-half days and two nights for a journey that in fact required a day and a night. Most of the other sources agree that the party passed the night of the surrender, December 23, at the Wilcox-Brazil ranch, reached Sumner shortly before noon on the twenty-fourth and departed shortly after noon, and arrived at Grzelachowski’s store in Puerto de Luna after noon on the twenty-fifth, where they were treated to a hearty Christmas dinner. They were in Las Vegas by late afternoon, December 26.
15. THE SENTENCE
1. Las Vegas Gazette, December 27, 1880 (extra). Rudulph, Wilson, and the Roybal brothers had returned to their homes in Puerto de Luna. The rest of the Texans (Williams, Bousman, Hall, and Chambers) had taken the road to White Oaks to rejoin Siringo and the others who had declined to go with Garrett.
2. Albert E. Hyde, Billy the Kid and the Old Regime in the Southwest (Ruidoso, N. Mex.: Frontier Book Co., n.d.), 20–22 (reprint of an article, “The Old Regime in the Southwest: The Reign of the Revolver in New Mexico,” Century Magazine 63 [March 1902]).
3. These quotations and those that follow are from Las Vegas Gazette, December 28, 1880.
4. Ibid.; Garrett, Authentic Life, 129.
5. Garrett, Authentic Life, 129, says he dismissed all but Stewart and Mason and enlisted the help of a friend, mail contractor Mike Cosgrove. The Las Vegas Gazette, December 30, 1880, identifies the guards as I have given them, and Jim East testifies to his presence and Emory’s in interview with J. Evetts Haley, Douglas, Ariz., September 27, 1927, HHC.
6. Garrett, Authentic Life, 130. East says Garrett shoved a six-shooter into the leader’s stomach and pushed him off: James H. East, September 27, 1927, HHC.
7. Las Vegas Gazette, December 28, 1880.
8. Ibid.; Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), December 29, 1880.
9. James H. East, September 27, 1927, HHC.
10. Ibid. Another firsthand account is Hyde, Billy the Kid, 24–28.
11. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), December 28, 1880.
12. Leon Metz, Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 89–91.
13. This and subsequent missives from Billy to Wallace are in the Wallace Papers, IHS.
14. Las Vegas Gazette, January 4 and March 12, 1881; Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), January 6, 1881.
15. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), March 1, 1881.
16. This letter is not in the Wallace Papers but was obtained from Wallace’s son by Maurice G. Fulton. Its text appears in Fulton’s History of the Lincoln County War, ed. Robert N. Mullin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), 336, and in William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881: A New Mexico Item (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), 300.
Nearly twenty years later, in a newspaper interview, Wallace said of this letter, “I knew what he meant. He referred to the note he received from me and in response to which he appeared at the hut on the mesa [Squire Wilson’s hut in Lincoln]. He was threatening to publish it if I refused to see him. I thwarted his purpose by giving a copy of the letter and a narrative of the circumstances connected with it to the paper published in the town. It was duly printed and upon its appearance a copy was sent to ‘Billy’ in his cell. He had nothing further to say.” Indianapolis World, June 8, 1902. No such item has been found in Santa Fe newspapers, and of course Billy had much more to say.
17. Las Vegas Gazette, March 30, 1881; Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), April 2, 1881. Both Rudabaugh and Wilson were convicted, and both escaped from jail. Rudabaugh disappeared into Mexico, where he made himself so obnoxious that at Parral, in 1886, residents killed him and cut off his head. Wilson supposedly went to Texas, lived respectably under an assumed name, and ultimately won a presidential pardon. However, Donald R. Lavash, biographer of Sheriff William Brady, is presently researching the life of Billy Wilson and is convinced that the man pardoned in Texas was not the man convicted in New Mexico.
18. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), April 3, 1881.
19. Helen Irwin, “When Billy the Kid Was Brought to Trial,” Frontier Times 6 (March 1929): 214–15, based on recollections of George Bowman, clerk of the court, and originally appearing in Fort Worth Star-Telegram, December 2, 1928.
20. The proceedings against Billy in Mesilla, both federal and territorial, are thinly documented, both in official records and the newspapers. Surviving records of the federal trial are in Criminal Case 411, U.S. v. Charles Bowdre, Dock Scurlock, Henry Brown, Henry Antrim, John Middleton, Stephen Stevens, John Scroggins, George Coe, Frederick Wait: murder. U.S. District Court, 3d Judicial District, RG 21, Records of the District Court of the United States, Territory of New Mexico, DFRC.
21. In addition to official sources, consult the secondary accounts in Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 305–15; and Philip J. Rasch, “The Hunting of Billy, the Kid,” English Westerners Brand Book 11 (January 1969): 6.
22. A biography is A. M. Gibson, The Life and Death of Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965). Curiously, the book is silent on Fountain’s role as the Kid’s attorney.
23. Surviving records are Criminal Cases 531 and 532, Territory v. William Bonney alias Kid: murder; and Doña Ana County, District Court Journal: 384–91, 406–07, 411, NMSRCA. The case was tried in Doña Ana County on a change of venue from Lincoln County, where the identifying numbers were 243 and 244. These records are printed as an appendix to C. L. Sonnichsen and William V. Morrison, Alias Billy the Kid (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1955), 98–107.
24. Mesilla News, April 16, 1879.
25. Las Vegas Gazette, April 28, 1881.
16. THE ESCAPE
1. Bell Hudson, quoted by his daughter in Mary Hudson Brothers, A Pecos Pioneer (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1943), 71–72. See also Philip J. Rasch, “The Olingers, Known Yet Forgotten,” Potomac Westerners Corral Dust 8 (February 1963): 1, 4–6.
2. Gildea to Maurice G. Fulton, Pearce, Ariz., January 16, 1929, New Mexico Notebook, Mullin Collection, HHC; W. R. (Jake) Owens, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Carlsbad, N. Mex., June 24, 1937, HHC; Lily (Casey) Klasner, My Girlhood among Outlaws, ed. Eve Ball (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972), 188; Weekly New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 1, 1881.
3. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881; Garrett, Authentic Life, 134.
4. Newman’s Semi-Weekly (Las Cruces), April 17, 1881.
5
. Paul Blazer, “The Fight at Blazer’s Mill: A Chapter in the Lincoln County War,” Arizona and the West 6 (Autumn 1964): 210; Garrett, Authentic Life, 132.
6. Garrett, Authentic Life, 132.
7. Bonney to Caypless, Mesilla, April 15, 1881, copy in LSM. The text also appears in William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881: A New Mexico Item (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), 320–21.
8. John P. Meadows, in collaboration with Maurice G. Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him,” MS, c. 1931, Rasch Collection, LSM. There is also a Meadows interview with J. Evetts Haley, Alamogordo, N. Mex., June 13, 1936, HHC, and a newspaper interview, “My Personal Recollections of ‘Billy, the Kid,’” Alamogordo News, June 11, 1936.
Meadows’s reminiscences challenge the historian. Internal evidence and other sources leave little question in my mind that he knew the Kid well, perhaps as well as he says. In April 1881 Meadows and a partner operated a little spread on the Peñasco south of Lincoln. According to Meadows, after Billy escaped from confinement in Lincoln, he came to the cabin and stayed over one night, during which he related the story of his incarceration and breakout. If true, this is the only source in which Billy’s own testimony is given. That Billy visited the Meadows cabin cannot be corroborated in other sources, but neither do other sources foreclose the possibility. To me, the Meadows recollections, allowing for fifty years’ dimming of memory and the inevitable exaggerations of the old-timer, ring true. With a faintly nagging hesitation, I have chosen to use them as source material.
9. Garrett, Authentic Life, 134.
10. Ibid., 133.
11. Ibid., 138.
12. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881.
13. I have combined Garrett’s and Billy’s similar versions of this incident to present what seems to me most likely. Garrett, Authentic Life, 137; and Meadows and Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him.”
The reconstruction that follows is drawn from several firsthand sources. They agree in some respects, disagree in others, and (usually the case) describe an incident in differing detail. In evaluating these sources, I have considered closeness to the event in time and place and, admittedly a highly personal judgment, plausibility—what most likely happened given the people, the setting, and the evidence. In addition to Garrett and Meadows, as cited above, the sources are an anonymous letter from Lincoln in Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881; two anonymous letters from White Oaks, April 30, 1881, in ibid.; account in Golden Era (White Oaks), May 5, 1881; anonymous letter from Lincoln, April 29, 1881, in New Southwest and Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), May 14, 1881; anonymous letter from Seven Rivers, N. Mex., May 11, 1881, in Tombstone Epitaph, June 6, 1881; account in Las Vegas Morning Gazette, May 10, 1881; account of Godfrey Gauss, Lincoln, January 15, 1890, in Lincoln County Leader (White Oaks), March 1, 1890; and Yginio Salazar, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Lincoln, N. Mex., August 17, 1927, HHC.
The account in the Grant County Herald deserves special mention. The writer had a sleeping room on the first floor of the courthouse and, when the break occurred, had just left the building with Ben Ellis to walk down the street to Ike Ellis’s store for dinner. The two heard the firing but attributed no significance to it. When they returned, they witnessed the final stages of the escape. Both in time and place, therefore, this account has immediacy.
Immediacy of place but nine years distance in time marks the account of Godfrey Gauss, who knew Billy from their weeks in Tunstall’s employ and who played a direct role in the escape.
Garrett was not in Lincoln, but obviously he took pains to find out what had happened and why, then wrote his account some five months later.
Finally, there is the Meadows account, previously discussed, which purports to give Billy’s own version but is separated in time from the event by fifty years.
14. Herman B. Weisner, “The Prisoners Who Saw the Kid Kill Olinger,” Rio Grande History 9 (Las Cruces: New Mexico State University Library, 1978): 6–7. The five men were Alexander Nunnelly, Charles Wall, John Copeland (not the Copeland of Lincoln County War note), Augustin Davalas, and Marejildo Torres.
Some accounts have Olinger taking these men out for the noon meal. However, the contemporary sources, and Garrett, specify evening.
15. Thus I credit the Meadows account of the killing of Bell. There are several others, but the only witness to the killing was the killer, and if Meadows told the truth, this is Billy’s own version.
The first press accounts, which had to be based on surmise, reported that Billy and Bell were playing cards when Billy hit him with the handcuffs and grabbed his revolver.
In Garrett’s rendering, Billy got so far ahead of Bell coming up the steps that he hobbled to the armory, shoved open the locked door, scooped up a pistol, and returned to the top of the stairs in time to shoot Bell as he came up. Bell was undoubtedly careless, but that careless?
In still another version, Billy’s friend Sam Corbet planted, or caused to be planted, in the privy a pistol wrapped in a newspaper and slipped word of it to Billy. This story, current among Lincoln old-timers in the 1920s and 1930s, was credited to Bonifacio Baca, Corbet’s brother-in-law. See Leslie Traylor, “Facts Regarding the Escape of Billy the Kid,” Frontier Times 13 (July 1936): 509. The respected historian of the Lincoln County War, Maurice G. Fulton, subscribed to this version. See his History of the Lincoln County War, ed. Robert N. Mullin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), 394–95. Fulton, who never bothered to cite sources, said that Judge Lucius Dills, a turn-of-the-century New Mexico attorney with a passion for history, had proved that after the shooting Bell’s pistol was still in his holster, fully loaded. I have not seen this “proof”; but if it resembles other Dill essays in history that I have seen, it is highly suspect. Until such proof is forthcoming, the recital that Meadows attributed to Billy seems to me the more plausible.
16. Gauss account in Lincoln County Leader (White Oaks), March 1, 1890, as confirmed by the account in Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), May 14, 1881. A letter from Lincoln in the Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881, reported that “Bell lay dead in the back yard with one bullet through him and two gashes on his head, apparently cut by a blow from the handcuffs.”
17. All the sources are in essential agreement about the details of this event. My account combines mainly Gauss, Garrett, and the Kid (Meadows). Some accounts (including the Meadows account) identify Alex Nunnelly, one of the men held in the Tularosa killings, as the one who told Olinger that the Kid had killed Bell. This does not make sense, for Nunnelly would have been on the other side of the street with Olinger. Nunnelly did figure in subsequent events, which probably led later to the erroneous ascription of this and other actions to him.
18. Kid (Meadows) and Gauss accounts. Again, Meadows wrongly attributes Gauss’s role to Nunnelly.
19. Las Vegas Daily Optic, May 3, 1881.
20. Anonymous from Lincoln, April 29, 1881, in Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), May 14, 1881.
21. Ibid. There are variations of what Billy said and when he said it, but the quotation is from an eyewitness writing the next day. The same observer stated that Billy also threw his handcuffs at Bell with a similar expletive. Since Bell’s body lay in the backyard, this is less easy to credit.
22. This is according to Gauss.
23. Garrett, Authentic Life, 138. Finally, we have a logical role for Nunnelly to play in the story. All others, in my judgment, were distortions of this act.
24. Ibid., 138.
25. Ibid., 138–39.
26. Las Vegas Optic, May 4, 1881.
27. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), May 3, 1881.
28. Ibid.; Executive Record Book No. 2, 1867–82, April 30, 1881, pp. 507–8, TANM, Microfilm Reel 21, Frame 581, NMSRCA. Legal documents of this period were full of misspelled words. Bonney was often spelled Bonny, and William Antrim was occasionally substituted for Henry Antrim as an alias.
29. Executive Re
cord Book No. 2, 1867–82, June 30, 1881, p. 515, Frame 586, TANM, NMSRCA.
17. THE EXECUTION
1. As related by Francisco Gómez in Leslie Traylor, “Facts Regarding the Escape of Billy the Kid,” Frontier Times 13 (July 1936): 510. Gómez incorrectly remembers the escape as at noon rather than in the evening. He also has Billy going up Baca Canyon rather than Salazar Canyon. But Baca Canyon lies east of Lincoln and would not have offered a logical route over the mountains to Las Tablas. Following up Salazar Canyon, Billy would have reached the Capitan summit near the head of Las Tablas Creek.
2. Yginio Salazar, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Lincoln, N. Mex., August 17, 1927, HHC; Garrett, Authentic Life, 140; Godfrey Gauss in Lincoln County Leader (White Oaks), March 1, 1890.
3. John P. Meadows, in collaboration with Maurice G. Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him,” MS, c. 1931, Rasch Collection, LSM. I have discussed this source in CHAPTER 16, n. 8. Barney Mason, who claimed that he trailed the Kid, gives his route as Agua Azul, Newcomb’s Ranch (on the Ruidoso), “Consios” Springs (probably Conejos), and Buffalo Arroyo: Las Vegas Morning Gazette, June 16, 1881. Thus Mason mentions neither Las Tablas nor the Peñasco, but does not necessarily preclude them either. Conejos and Buffalo are near Fort Sumner and do not rule out the Peñasco. In addition to the Meadows account, I think the reports of Mathews’s death lend support to Billy’s presence on the Peñasco.