To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Mark Lee Gardner

  “For God’s sake, follow me,” Middleton pleaded before spurring his horse on.

  “What, John? What, John?” was all the surprised Tunstall managed to speak.

  At the first sight of the posse, the turkey chasers, Dick Brewer and Robert Widenmann, had retreated to a nearby hillside, where they planned to make a stand behind some large boulders and trees. Middleton and the Kid were close behind them. Their pursuers pulled up when they saw Tunstall by himself.

  The first members of the posse who approached Tunstall were William “Buck” Morton, who was Jimmy Dolan’s stock foreman, and Tom Hill. Hill was one of The Boys who had been imprisoned with Jesse Evans in the Lincoln County jail (Evans was also a member of this posse—The Boys were Dolan men, bought and paid for). Tunstall froze when he recognized Morton and Hill, but Hill said he would not be hurt if he gave himself up. Tunstall urged his horse toward the two men. When the Englishman got close, Morton put a rifle bullet through his chest. Tunstall tumbled out of his saddle. Hill then leapt off his mount and ran up to the dying man and fired a pistol into the back of Tunstall’s head. Billy and the others on the hillside heard the shots, but they could not see what had just transpired. With a stunned voice, Middleton said that Tunstall must have been killed.

  In a bizarre act, the posse members carefully arranged Tunstall’s body, placing one blanket beneath it and another over it. The dead man’s overcoat was placed under his bloody head. Tunstall’s horse, which had also been killed, was lying next to its owner. Someone in the posse lifted the horse’s head and shoved Tunstall’s hat under it. The posse did not bother with Billy and the others. Instead, they gathered the stock they were after and rode away. Tunstall’s men waited until it was good and dark and then headed to Lincoln. They would see to Tunstall’s remains later. Billy and Widenmann arrived in the county seat between ten and eleven that evening. Despite the tensions building in Lincoln for some time, the news they brought startled the town. The posse members would later claim that Tunstall had fired upon them first, but as far as the Kid and the others in the McSween camp were concerned—as well as nearly everyone else in Lincoln—Tunstall’s death was nothing short of cold-blooded murder.

  Tunstall’s body arrived in the county seat the following day. Because the corpse had been strapped to the back of a horse for part of its final journey, the Englishman’s fine clothes were torn, and his face was scratched from going through the brush and scrub oak in the mountains. Billy stared down at the corpse after it was laid out on a table in McSween’s home.

  “I’ll get some of them before I die,” he said, and then he turned away.

  Billy had known Tunstall less than three months, but by all accounts, he liked him a great deal. Frank Collinson, a Texas cowpuncher who first met Billy on the Pecos in 1878, remembered years later the few words the Kid spoke about his former employer: “I heard him say that Tunstall was the only man who ever treated him as if he were freeborn and white.”

  It was no use going to Sheriff Brady for help—after all, the posse that killed Tunstall was acting under the sheriff’s authority—but McSween was just as good at manipulating the legal system as Dolan. He marched Billy, Brewer, and Middleton over to Justice of the Peace John B. Wilson, and they swore out affidavits naming those in the posse. Warrants were issued for the accused and turned over to Atanacio Martínez, the town constable. Martínez did not especially want to confront Brady and his well-armed men, but some in the McSween crowd threatened to kill him if he did not do his duty. On Wednesday, February 20, Martínez, with “deputies” Frederick Waite (a twenty-four-year-old, part Chickasaw Tunstall man from Indian Territory), and Billy Bonney, walked to the two-story Dolan store in Lincoln to make the arrests. It did not go well. Brady refused to let the constable arrest any members of his posse, and the sheriff showed that he had the firepower advantage and arrested them.

  “You little son of a bitch, give me your gun!” Brady growled at the Kid.

  “Take it, you old son of a bitch!” Billy said, handing over his weapon.

  Both the Kid and Waite were released after thirty hours, but they were still in jail when Tunstall’s funeral took place the following afternoon. If the wind was just right, they may have heard Susan McSween’s parlor organ, which had been carried outside to the burial place behind Tunstall’s store. And perhaps the two comrades faintly heard the singing of hymns, all the while growing increasingly determined to have their revenge.

  Sheriff William Brady.

  Robert G. McCubbin Collection

  BY THE FIRST OF March, both sides were seething with hatred and neither would be satisfied until the other was completely ruined. Alexander McSween was so scared that Sheriff Brady would arrest him—after which he believed he would be assassinated—that he had temporarily fled his home in Lincoln, although he did not go far. Well known to never carry a gun, McSween nevertheless accepted his role as the leader in the fight against the Dolan faction, even though that fight had turned into a bloody war. Tunstall’s twenty-eight-year-old ranch foreman, Dick Brewer, furious that the Englishman’s killers were still at large, went to see Justice Wilson and had himself appointed a special constable. Brewer began recruiting several Tunstall men for his posse. And for the second time in less than two weeks, Billy Bonney found himself working on the right side of the law, or so he and his companions believed. The posse called themselves the Regulators, although a more appropriate name would have been the Avengers. And they were more than ready for a fight.

  The first clash came on March 6, when eleven of the Regulators came upon five riders just west of the junction of the Rio Peñasco and the Pecos. The riders, just a hundred yards away when first spotted, fled at the sight of Brewer’s bunch, and the Regulators spurred their mounts to overtake them. The riders suddenly split up. Billy, pushing his horse as hard as it would go, recognized Buck Morton and Frank Baker (another member of The Boys) and took off after them. The rest of the Regulators followed. The Regulators chased the pair for several miles, ripping off almost one hundred rounds of ammunition without inflicting a single scratch. Finally, Morton’s and Baker’s exhausted mounts both tripped, throwing horses and riders to the ground. The two Dolan men quickly positioned themselves to make a good, long fight of it, but Brewer talked them into surrendering with the promise that they would not be harmed. This deal made Billy furious, and he ran toward Morton with the intent of killing him right at that moment. But several of the Regulators physically restrained him, Billy cursing Brewer the entire time. Posse and prisoners soon mounted up, and as they did so, a stern-faced Billy was overheard to say, “My time will come.”

  The Kid, of course, knew his opportunity for revenge was being taken away from him. Everyone knew what Sheriff Brady would do—or rather not do—with these men once they were handed over in Lincoln. There was not much Brewer could do, either. He was the leader of the Regulators, but he was also a duly appointed peace officer, and he had given his word.

  On their way back to Lincoln, the Regulators made stops with their prisoners at John Chisum’s South Spring ranch and the tiny settlement of Roswell. At Roswell, Buck Morton handed a letter to postmaster Ash Upson, Billy’s old Silver City acquaintance. Addressed to a relative in Virginia, the letter said that Morton had heard some of the Regulators say that he and Baker would be killed sometime before they reached Lincoln. Some of the Regulators, not all.

  Shortly after the prisoners were captured, William McCloskey, a former Tunstall employee, had joined the Regulators, and he was a friend of Morton’s. While at Roswell, McCloskey loudly announced that he would not let anything happen to Morton and Baker. But instead of protecting the men, all he did was make the Regulators even more suspicious of him than they already were. McCloskey had been part of the posse that had run down Tunstall, although he had not had anything to do with the Englishman’s murder.

  About twenty miles out of Roswell, in Agua Negra Canyon, Frank MacNab, a loyal Regulator, casually rode up behind McCloskey, whipped out
his revolver, and pointed the muzzle at McCloskey’s head.

  “You are the son of a bitch that’s got to die before harm can come to these fellows, are you?” McNab shouted.

  He jerked the gun’s trigger as he spoke and blew McCloskey out of his saddle.

  When Morton and Baker saw what had happened, they violently spurred their broken-down horses and desperately tried to get away before they met the same fate as McCloskey. It was no use. The Regulators opened up on the fleeing pair, finally cutting them down after a dash of four hundred yards. Baker had been hit five times, Morton nine. Billy got off his horse and walked up to Morton’s body. He stooped down and turned Morton’s head so that he could see the man’s face. He stared at it for a moment, likely taking satisfaction in his revenge, and then walked away. All three bodies were left to bloat and turn in the New Mexico sun. They were eventually buried by some sheepherders.

  “Of course, you know,” Billy later remarked to his friend George Coe, “I never meant to let them birds reach Lincoln alive.”

  EARLY ON THE MORNING of April 1, Sheriff William Brady stopped in at Wortley’s Hotel for breakfast. Like Jimmy Dolan and John Riley, his friends who operated The House, the forty-eight-year-old lawman was a native of Ireland. He had served for fifteen years in both the regular army and the New Mexico Volunteers, and most of that time was spent fighting Indians. After he left the army, Brady was elected to a two?year term as sheriff of Lincoln County in 1869 and again in 1876. He knew most everyone in the massive county—he was the federal census taker in 1870—and most everyone in the county knew the five-foot-eight-inch, blue?eyed sheriff. There was no question that Brady was influenced by Dolan and Riley, and on this particular day, the sheriff must have been certain that his friends had the upper hand in their feud with lawyer McSween.

  Looking east down Lincoln’s main and only street.

  Robert G. McCubbin Collection

  For one thing, New Mexico governor Samuel B. Axtell, a dimwitted, pompous man who was practically a puppet of the Santa Fe Ring, had made a brief visit to Lincoln a month earlier and issued a highly unorthodox proclamation that voided John B. Wilson’s appointment as justice of the peace. This was devastating for the Regulators because it meant that Dick Brewer was no longer a special constable, and the warrants he carried were not worth the paper they were written on. And worse, he and his posse were just a bunch of outlaws. Their leader, Alexander McSween, was no better off. The Scotsman had been promised safety at nearby Fort Stanton if he turned himself in (thereby avoiding incarceration in the local dungeon), but promises in Lincoln County had not been worth much of late.

  McSween was expected to arrive in Lincoln that April morning, and when Sheriff Brady stepped out of Wortley’s after finishing his breakfast, he carried not only a warrant in his pocket but also a pair of handcuffs.

  Brady walked across the street to the Dolan store, where he was joined by four armed deputies, and at about 9:30 A.M., the party started east down Lincoln’s main street. It would be Brady’s last look at the town of Lincoln. As the lawmen passed the Tunstall store, a burst of gunshots split the air. From behind the wall of Tunstall’s corral, at least six Regulators, including Billy Bonney, had let loose with their rifles. Brady and Deputy George Hindman fell at the first fire; the rest quickly scattered for cover behind anything they could find. In the calm that followed the first fusillade, a slow moaning could be heard coming from the street. Brady, obviously a primary target, was covered with blood—he had been pierced by several bullets. Hindman was alive but he was badly wounded, and he kept calling out for water. Saloon keeper Ike Stockton bravely stepped out into the street to help Hindman, but as Stockton lifted up the poor man, another rifle shot ended the deputy’s life.

  Billy and Jim French raced out of the corral and over to Brady’s outstretched body. Presumably they were going to take the fallen lawman’s weapons, as well as the despised legal documents he carried. But as soon as the Kid and French were in plain view, Billy Mathews, one of Brady’s deputies who had found a hiding place across the street, opened fire. With bullets kicking up dust around them, Billy and French scampered back to the corral, but not before a bullet seared French in his leg. Soon all the Regulators except French, who was in a great deal of pain, mounted their horses and rode out of town. Brady’s surviving deputies managed a few shots as the killers fled, but they were smart enough not to pursue them.

  The Regulators were confident they had not only torpedoed Brady’s plan to arrest McSween but also gotten revenge on the sheriff, whom they held responsible for Tunstall’s murder, and Hindman, who had been part of the infamous sheriff’s posse. And despite Governor Axtell’s proclamation placing them outside the law, the Regulators saw no reason to stop pursuing the men who murdered Tunstall. But no matter how much the Regulators believed they were right, the assassination of a county sheriff caused the people of the Territory to turn against them and their cause. Such a heinous deed could not go ignored or unpunished.

  ANDREW L. ROBERTS THOUGHT it was time to get out of Lincoln County. As a member of the posse that murdered Tunstall, he figured the Regulators wanted to find him. And considering their bloody record, he had good reason to fear the worst if he fell into their hands. Sometime during the latter part of March, he spotted Billy and Regulator Charlie Bowdre near the village of San Patricio. Roberts, convinced that the pair was after him, grabbed his rifle and opened fire. The long-range gun battle was brief and no one was wounded, but Billy and Bowdre recognized their attacker, and Roberts knew it.

  So Roberts sold his small ranch and prepared to move on to some place less dangerous. The only thing keeping Roberts in the area was money. He was expecting to receive payment for his land through the mail, and he had traveled to the small settlement of Blazer’s Mill on Tularosa Creek and waited for the letter to arrive. The letter never came, but the Regulators did. They arrived at Blazer’s Mill at about 11:00 A.M. on April 4, demanding that Dr. Joseph Blazer feed them a hearty meal.

  Roberts was not there when the posse pulled up because he had been warned that they were in the area, and he had ridden off, leaving instructions to have his mail forwarded. Then Roberts made a terrible mistake. On his way out of the valley, he spotted the Regulators, fifteen in number, heading east toward the settlement. He also saw the mail carrier traveling in the same direction. Thinking that the mail wagon might have the letter he was waiting for, he cautiously retraced his steps to Blazer’s Mill. When he came in sight of the mill, it appeared that Brewer’s men had not stopped but passed through the settlement. What Roberts could not see, though, were the Regulators’ horses in Blazer’s corral. Roberts calmly rode up to the main house, a large two-story adobe that included a store and office, and dismounted near an old stump, making sure to remove his holster and cartridge belts, which he draped over his saddle horn. Roberts knew old man Blazer did not like weapons in the house.

  As Roberts walked up to the main entrance on the south side of the building, one of the Regulators stepped out the door and gave Roberts the surprise of his life. “Here’s Roberts,” he shouted back to his buddies, after which he sprang back inside the building. Roberts turned and ran to his mount, at the same time yelling to Blazer’s son, Almer, and two other boys nearby to get the hell out of there. Roberts jerked his Winchester repeating carbine out of its scabbard and headed for the building’s southwest corner. He then backed along the house’s west wall, carbine at the ready. The Regulators poured out of the building, guns drawn. John Middleton was the first to run out past the corner. He took a bullet in the lung. Roberts swiftly worked the carbine’s lever action; his next shot hit Charlie Bowdre in the midsection. Had it not been for a simple belt buckle, Bowdre would have been a dead man. At this point, the Regulators figured out that it was not the best idea to go beyond the building’s corner.

  The Regulators stuck their guns out around the corner and blasted away in the direction of Roberts, who had hunkered back into the door frame of Blazer’s
office. Another shot from Roberts took off George Coe’s right trigger finger. Roberts was clearly getting the best of Brewer’s men, but Billy had noticed Roberts’s pistol hanging from his saddle, and he knew the type of carbine Roberts carried and how many cartridges it held. When Billy figured that Roberts had exhausted all his ammo, he slipped around the corner and ran toward the office door. The Kid fired before he had a clean shot, and his bullet passed through the facing of the door frame. But even so, the bullet pierced Roberts’s stomach just left of the navel and exited above his right hip. Roberts, who had not seen Billy until it was too late, punched the muzzle of his carbine violently into the Kid’s belly, nearly knocking the Kid over. Before Billy had a chance to recover, Roberts burst into Blazer’s office; the Kid turned and raced back for the corner of the building.

  Bleeding and in great pain, Roberts discovered a Springfield rifle in .45-70 caliber that belonged to Dr. Blazer, as well as a belt of cartridges. He yanked the mattress off a couch in the room and threw it in front of the door. He then got down on the mattress in a prone position and aimed the Springfield out through the doorway and waited for his next target. Roberts was an old buffalo hunter; it was said he had worked with Buffalo Bill Cody in the late 1860s supplying bison meat to railroad crews in western Kansas. Dr. Blazer’s Springfield was a special “Officer’s Model,” equipped with a tang peep sight for precision shooting at long distances—and Roberts knew how to handle such a weapon.

  Keeping out of Roberts’s sight, Dick Brewer and one of his men made their way from the big house to the sawmill. Brewer crawled out into the mill’s log yard, from where he had a clear view of the office door from 125 yards away. When Brewer thought he saw some movement in the doorway, he took a shot. The bullet hit the office’s back wall with a thud, and that immediately got Roberts’s attention. Roberts looked out toward the log yard, but he patiently held his fire. After a short, tense few moments, he saw a hat slowly rising above one of the logs. When he guessed there was enough hat above the log, he squeezed the Springfield’s trigger. A loud crack and an explosion of white smoke came from the office door. In the log yard, Dick Brewer tumbled backward. He was dead.