To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Mark Lee Gardner

  For over a hundred years, Thomas Folliard’s surname has been published incorrectly as O’Folliard. Garrett is the exception, giving the boy’s full name as Tom O. Folliard. There is no such surname as O’Folliard, and indeed, the 1870 U.S. Census for Zavala County, Texas, enumerates a nine-year-old “Thomas Folliard” living in the household of David Cook, an uncle. Tom’s parents, Stephen and Sarah Rose, are enumerated in the 1860 U.S. Census for Uvalde County with their surname spelled “Fulliard."

  For my description of Tom Folliard, I have relied upon an interview with Frank Collinson in the Amarillo Globe-News, Aug. 14, 1938; Frank Coe’s interview with J. Evetts Haley, San Patricio, New Mexico, Aug. 14, 1927; and Susan McSween Barber’s account as published in Miguel Antonio Otero, The Real Billy the Kid, 117.

  Bowdre’s father, A. R. Bowdre, is enumerated in the 1860 U.S. Census for DeSoto County, Mississippi, with real estate valued at $51,000 and a personal estate (read slaves ) at $118,000. Ten years later, the value of A. R. Bowdre’s real estate was given as $35,000 and his personal estate as $4,500.

  Bowdre’s rampage in Lincoln is fully described in a letter published in the Mesilla Valley Democrat, Sept. 8, 1877.

  George Coe’s assessment of Bowdre and Billy is quoted from Miguel Antonio Otero, The Real Billy the Kid, 136.

  Frank Collinson considered Bowdre the best dressed of the “Kid’s men.” See the Amarillo News-Globe, Aug. 14, 1938.

  Billy’s quote about remaining in New Mexico is from George W. Coe, Frontier Fighter, 200.

  Wallace’s amnesty proclamation may be found in the microfilm series Territorial Archives of New Mexico, roll 21, frame 505, NMSRCA.

  My account of Chapman’s murder comes from a letter written by “Max” at Fort Stanton on Feb. 23, 1879, and published in the Thirty-Four, Las Cruces, Mar. 5, 1879; and Edgar A. Waltz, “Retrospection,” typescript copy in Lincoln County War History File #20, NMSRCA.

  Wallace’s comment reflecting his frustration with New Mexico is quoted from Calvin Horn, New Mexico’s Troubled Years: The Story of the Early Territorial Governors (Albuquerque: Horn & Wallace, 1963), 200.

  Ira Leonard is quoted from Nolan, The Lincoln County War, 387.

  According to Louisa Beaubien Barrett, Juanita Garrett “only lived a few days.” Paulita Maxwell said she lived three weeks. See Jerry Weddle, “The Kid at Old Fort Sumner,” The Outlaw Gazette 5 (Dec. 1992): 8; and Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid, 186.

  A powerful cornerstone of Kid lore is that the Kid and Garrett were the closest of friends. Both Paulita Maxwell and George Coe said so, and it has been portrayed as fact by numerous authors and screenwriters who could not resist the potently tragic tale of best friends who find themselves on opposite sides of the law, with the result that one is forced to take the other’s life. Garrett is partly to blame for this, for in his 1882 biography of Billy, he stated that, “I have known ‘The Kid’ personally since and during the continuance of what was known as ‘The Lincoln County War,’ up to the moment of his death, of which I was the unfortunate instrument, in the discharge of my official duty.” But this statement of Garrett’s was more an attempt to establish his authority for writing such a book; he was not claiming a close personal friendship with Billy the Kid. A more realistic version of their relationship was revealed by James E. Sligh in an obscure article published in 1908, the year of Garrett’s death. Sligh had grown up in Claiborne Parish, not far from the Garrett plantation, and although the two had not known each other in Louisiana, they had made each other’s acquaintance in White Oaks in 1880, where they had ample opportunity-and ample reason-to talk. Garrett told Sligh that while he knew the Kid well, they were neither friends nor enemies: “He minds his business and I attend to mine. He visits my wife’s folks sometimes, but he never comes around me. I just simply don’t want anything to do with him, and he knows it, and he knows that he has nothing to fear from me as long as he does not interfere with me and my affairs.” See J. E. Sligh, “The Lincoln County War: A Sequel to the Story of ‘Billy the Kid,’” The Overland Monthly 52 (Aug. 1908): 170.

  Several of Billy’s contemporaries remembered that he was ambidextrous. That Billy favored his right hand when shooting is from Charles Nebo “Nib” Jones to Eve Ball, May 9, 1948, Globe, Arizona, Eve Ball Papers.

  Paulita Maxwell told the story of Garrett and Billy shooting at a jackrabbit to Burns, The Saga of Billy the Kid, 197.

  Emerson Hough was amazed by Garrett’s skill with a six-shooter. In a rare example of immodesty, Garrett told Hough, “I am as good a revolver shot as I ever saw. I do not boast of that, but simply say it is true so far as I know.” Garrett also told Hough that he had never been beaten in a revolver match. See Hough’s “The American Six-Shooter: What the Real Six-Shooter Is-What It Will Do and Will Not Do,” The Outing Magazine ( Jan. 1909): 505-506.

  Garrett’s assessment of the Kid’s shooting skills is from the Daily New Mexican, July 21, 1881. The Garrett quote regarding the importance of “nerve” is from the Davenport Republican, Davenport, Iowa, Aug. 7, 1902.

  For Billy’s killing of Joe Grant, I have relied almost exclusively upon the account and quotes in Garrett, The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, 74-77. The subsequent episode at Sunnyside is from the Las Vegas Daily Optic, Feb. 22, 1881; and the recollections of Milnor Rudolph’s grandson (also named Milnor Rudolph) in “Billy the Kid” (typescript), Marta Weigle Collection, Chávez History Library. Paco Anaya claimed that Joe Grant had been hired by John Chisum to assassinate Billy. See I Buried Billy, 81.

  Apolinaria’s birth year is uncertain; her enumerations in the various censuses seldom agree, and the birth year on her grave marker does not agree with any of the censuses. Her nickname, “Negra,” is mentioned by both Paco Anaya and, amazingly enough, by Mrs. James Patrick Smith of Claiborne Parish, Louisiana. In a 1967 interview, Mrs. Smith recalled that Pat and Negra visited the parish every summer “after about the middle 1880s” to see Pat’s sister, Margaret Lay. She remembered that “Pat’s wife was a dark complected lady with jet black hair and eyes.” See Paco Anaya, I Buried Billy, 77, and Mrs. James Patrick Smith to J. J. Smith, May 23, 1967, Box 18, Louisiana Folder, Leon C. Metz Papers.

  The Garrett-Gutiérrez marriage is recorded in Marriage Records, 1857-1946, La Yglesia de San Jose (St. Joseph), Anton Chico, New Mexico, Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, Microfilm Roll 61-A, NMSRCA. Married on that same day, in what was possibly a double ceremony, were Garrett’s friend Barney Mason and Juana Madrid. There is some debate as to whether these wedding ceremonies took place at Anton Chico or Fort Sumner. It is possible that the priest married the couples at Fort Sumner and entered the record into the marriage book upon his return to Anton Chico.

  For Joseph C. Lea, see Elvis E. Fleming, Captain Joseph C. Lea: From Confederate Guerrilla to New Mexico Patriarch (Las Cruces: Yucca Tree Press, 2002).

  For Lea’s recruitment of Garrett, see George Curry, George Curry, 1861-1947: An Autobiography, ed. H. B. Hening (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1958), 40-41.

  A tintype (more properly, ferrotype) produces a mirror image of its subject. Previous historians and writers, unaware of this significant fact, have mistakenly concluded that Billy was left-handed. The most famous result of this error is the 1958 Paul Newman/Arthur Penn film The Left Handed Gun. The illustration of the tintype reproduced in this book has been corrected so that Billy appears as he would in life, with his pistol on his right hip.

  Mescalero Apache Indian Percy Big Mouth is quoted from Sherry Robinson, Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as told to Eve Ball (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 159.

  For Rudabaugh, see Frederick Nolan, “Dirty Dave: The Life and Times of Billy the Kid’s Worst Friend,” The Kid (Dec. 1989): 7-13; and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, New York, June 19, 1881.

  For Tom Pickett, see Don Cline, “Tom Pickett: Friend of Billy the Kid,” True West 44 ( July 1997): 40-49; Rasch, Trailing Billy the Kid, 99-109; and the Las Vega
s Daily Optic, Dec. 27 and 29, 1880.

  For Billy Wilson, see Rasch, Trailing Billy the Kid, 58-71.

  Azariah Wild’s New Mexico reports are found in Reports of Special Operative Azariah F. Wild, Daily Reports of U.S. Secret Service Agents, 1875-1936, Records of the United States Secret Service, RG 87, Microfilm T915, roll 308, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

  There are two versions of George Curry’s encounter with Billy the Kid, and I have drawn upon both. See Curry, George Curry, 18-19; and William A. Keleher, The Fabulous Frontier: Twelve New Mexico Items (Santa Fe: The Rydal Press, 1945), 62.

  W. G. Ritch’s Thanksgiving Proclamation is in the Territorial Archives of New Mexico, roll 99, frame 139.

  5. OUTLAWS AND LAWMEN

  Frank Nelson Page told of his encounter with the Kid and Billy Wilson in a long letter to the New Mexico State Tribune, Albuquerque, circa 1926; a typescript copy is in the Maurice G. Fulton Collection. Page’s wife, Albenita, a native New Mexican, also had a memorable encounter with Billy at Puerto de Luna. She said that the Kid walked into Grzelachowski’s mercantile one day when it was unattended and began taking dress goods off the shelves and handing them to her and other women who were also in the store. She said that the women did not tell on Billy. See the obituary for Albenita Page in the Albuquerque Tribune, Aug. 12, 1958.

  The Kid’s involvement in the mail robberies is noted by Azariah Wild in his reports of Oct. 22 and 28, and Nov. 6, 1880. Billy’s letter to Ira Leonard is discussed in Wild’s reports for Oct. 6 and Oct. 9. The gang’s raid on White Oaks is mentioned by Wild in his report for Nov. 22.

  For the events surrounding the Kid, Wilson, and Rudabaugh’s standoff with the White Oaks posse and the killing of Jimmy Carlyle, see Garrett, The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, 82-85; the account of Joe Steck as published in Keleher, The Fabulous Frontier, 59-62; and Billy’s own account as originally published in the Las Vegas Gazette and reprinted in Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 288-289.

  For a biographical sketch of Jimmy Carlyle, see Miles Gilbert, Leo Remiger, and Sharon Cunningham, Encyclopedia of Buffalo Hunters and Skinners, vol. 1 (Union City, Tenn.: Pioneer Press, 2003), 90. Carlyle’s estate inventory lists, among other things, one buffalo gun, value $10.00, and one pair mules, value $125.00. (Did the posse recover Carlyle’s stolen mules at the Greathouse-Kuch ranch?) See probate file #98, Lincoln County Clerk’s Office, Carrizozo, New Mexico.

  Dave Rudabaugh, as quoted in the Las Vegas Daily Optic, Jan. 21, 1881, is the source for the number of shots fired at Carlyle and who fired them.

  There is evidence that Garrett had served as a Lincoln County deputy sheriff earlier in the year. According to the minutes from the Lincoln County Commissioners’ book, Garrett presented accounts against the county on May 7 and July 9 for “services rendered as Deputy Sheriff.” What exactly these services were is unknown, although they appear to have been of a temporary nature. Typed transcriptions of the minutes pertaining to Garrett are in the Donald Cline Collection, Series 10419, Folder 69, NMSRCA.

  Wild’s comment about the deputy U.S. marshals is quoted from his report for Friday, Dec. 4, 1880.

  For Barney Mason, I have relied upon Philip J. Rasch, Warriors of Lincoln County, ed. Robert K. DeArment (Laramie, Wyo.: National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, 1998), 102-107; Azariah Wild’s report for Nov. 20, 1880; and Mason’s entries in the 1880 and 1910 U.S. censuses for New Mexico and California, respectively.

  For the activities of Garrett’s posse on its jaunts to the Yerby ranch and Los Portales, I have relied primarily on the reports of Azariah Wild and Garrett’s own account in his The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid.

  Los Portales today hardly resembles the distinctive rock formation that greeted Billy the Kid and others in the late nineteenth century. For histories of Los Portales and, most importantly, photographs that depict the site as it probably appeared in Billy and Garrett’s time, see the Clovis News-Journal, Clovis, New Mexico, May 29, 1938, and June 2, 1940.

  John P. Meadows is the source for Garrett’s stipulation that Charlie Bowdre arrive at their parley unarmed. See Meadows, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, 43-44.

  For the Garrett-Leiva gunfight, I have supplemented Garrett’s own account with newspaper articles in the Daily New Mexican, Dec. 17, 1880, and the Las Vegas Daily Optic, Aug. 18, 1881. Leiva was subsequently charged with assault with intent to kill and tried in Las Vegas in August 1881. He was found guilty but received only a small fine, which, according to the Las Vegas Gazette of Sept. 7, 1881, incensed Puerto de Luna area residents. Some of the “best citizens” of that section told the Gazette that Leiva would likely be lynched if he returned to Puerto de Luna. Over four decades later, Francisco Romero, objecting to his unflattering portrayal in Garrett’s The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, sought to prevent the distribution of a 1927 reprint of Garrett’s book by Macmillan. In an attempt to save face, Romero wrote an alternate version of that day’s events in which he claimed to have disarmed Garrett and Mason in Grzelachowski’s store after the gunfight. Not likely. Romero was successful in getting the reprint withdrawn for a short time, but Macmillan re-released the book unchanged. See Maurice G. Fulton to James H. East, Roswell, New Mexico, Sept. 15, 1928; and Statement of Francisco Romero, Box 16, Leon C. Metz Papers.

  6. THE KID HUNTED

  Billy’s original letter to Governor Wallace of Dec. 12, 1880, is available for viewing online as part of the Indiana Historical Society’s Digital Image Library (http:// images.indianahistory.org). According to Garrett, Billy also wrote a letter about this same time to Joseph C. Lea at Roswell, saying that “if the officers would give him a little time, and let him alone until he could rest up his horses and get ready, he would leave the country for good; but if he was pursued, or harassed, he would inaugurate a bloody war, and fight it out to the fatal end.” See The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, 101.

  Governor Wallace’s reward proclamation of Dec. 13 is found in the Territorial Archives of New Mexico, roll 21, frame 565. Notice of the proclamation was published in the Daily New Mexican, Dec. 14, 1880. The Las Vegas Gazette’s criticism of the reward, published in its issue of Dec. 15, 1880, is as quoted in Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 291.

  There are several primary accounts that illuminate Garrett’s hunt for and capture of the Kid. The best, and the one produced closest to when the events occurred, is Garrett’s The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, from which I have drawn the bulk of my quoted material. Charlie Siringo, one of the Texas posse members who chose not to go with Garrett, published his version of these events in 1885 in his A Texas Cow Boy, or, Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony. Siringo reproduced the account of posse member Lon Chambers, who Siringo claimed related it to him a short time later. Unfortunately, Siringo liked to spin a good tale even more than the Kid. Other posse members also left accounts, but they were either written or collected decades later and, like Siringo’s, are not always reliable. By far the best of these is James East’s interview with J. Evetts Haley, Douglas, Arizona, Sept. 27, 1927, J. Evetts Haley Collection. See also the account of Louis Bousman in James H. Earle, ed., The Capture of Billy the Kid (College Station, Tex.: Creative Publishing Company, 1988). The two Las Vegas newspapers, the Gazette and the Daily Optic, also contain valuable contemporary reporting on these same events. See Billy the Kid: Las Vegas Newspaper Accounts of His Career, 1880-1881.

  Garrett’s comment about Tom Folliard’s scream after being shot is from Hough, The Story of the Outlaw, 302.

  The Stinking Spring site is on private property east of the present-day community of Taiban, New Mexico. Only the foundation remains of the rock house, which was discovered in 1984. Some accounts mention that the house had a window, but the majority seems to agree that the only opening in the structure was the doorway.

  Contemporary writings, including Garrett, refer to the site as Stinking Spring, singular, while later accounts refer to it in the plural,
Stinking Springs. I’ve followed the historic usage. See Allen Barker, “I Refound Stinking Springs,” True West 36 (Feb. 1989): 14-19.

  Garrett does not mention Barney Mason’s threat to kill Billy after he was in custody. However, both Jim East and Louis Bousman related the incident. East told the story twice, in the 1927 interview with J. Evetts Haley (cited above) and in a May 1, 1920, letter to Charlie Siringo, reprinted in Siringo’s History of “Billy the Kid," 97-105. Bousman told it in his interview with Haley, Oct. 23, 1934.

  Both Bousman and East recalled their unpleasant encounter with Manuela Bowdre. East, in his letter to Siringo of May 1, 1920, claimed that Bowdre’s wife hit him over the head with a branding iron. In a sad follow-up to Bowdre’s death, Acting Governor Ritch received a letter from Captain Joseph C. Lea on Dec. 29 pleading Bowdre’s case and requesting Governor Wallace to ask the district attorney to throw out Bowdre’s murder indictment (for the killing of Roberts at Blazer’s Mill). Lea also enclosed a letter he had received from Bowdre in which Bowdre asked for his help. Lea’s letter was written on Dec. 24, the day after Bowdre was killed by Garrett’s posse. See Lea to Wallace, Roswell, New Mexico, Dec. 24, 1880, and Bowdre to Lea, Fort Sumner, New Mexico, Dec. 15, 1880, both in William H. Bonney Collection (AC 017-P), Chávez History Library; and the Daily New Mexican, Dec. 29, 1880.

  For the intimate meeting in the Maxwell residence between Billy and Paulita, see East to Charlie Siringo, Apr. 26, 1920, as quoted in Siringo, History of “Billy the Kid," 105-107; and East to Judge William H. Burgess, Douglas, Arizona, May 20, 1926, Research Files, Robert N. Mullin Collection.

  East told of Billy’s attempt to trick him in the Puerto de Luna store in his interview with J. Evetts Haley, Sept. 27, 1927.

  7. FACING DEATH BOLDLY

  Olinger’s unusual full name comes from the research of Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 146. Interestingly, Olinger is enumerated in the 1860 U.S. Census for Mound City Township, Linn County, Kansas, as a female (the spelling of the first name in the census is Amaradath). Olinger as the “tall sycamore” is from the Las Vegas Daily Optic of Feb. 22, 1881.