Billy the Kid: An Autobiography

by Edwards, Daniel A.

  “John Middleton was lots older than the rest of us. He was as mean as hell, a heavy drinker. Tom O’Folliard was about the age of Jesse Evans and me. Tom was a big fellow. Jesse and me were small. Tom was good, but liked to drink some. Charlie Bowdre was older than us. He was a good man- could shoot quick. Rudabaugh was the toughest man I ever knew. He was older and rougher and had been through lots of trouble. I saw him in Sonora after that shooting at Maxwell’s when they thought they had killed me. He was calm; not easily excited. Tom Pickett and Wilson were not bad men. I don’t remember of seeing them in that war up there. Skurlock wasn’t a bad man. He was in the war, though. Hank Brown was from a good family, but he was mean. So was Fred Wayte. They left me on a cattle drive just before Skurlock or just after him. I don’t remember now.”

  “Selman fought on our side in that cattle business in ’78. I knew him in ’77. He was always in trouble and my men helped him, too. He was a good shot and had lots of nerve, too, he did. I don’t think he worked for Chisum on that ranch. But I don’t know. He was up there with the rest of us.”

  “Tunstall had a store in Lincoln in opposition to Murphy and Dolan. McSween became a partner with Tunstall. Then Old John Chisum joined them. Murphy men had been rounding up Old John’s cattle and selling them to the army at Fort Stanton. Then Chisum would pay us boys a dollar a head to get his cattle back. That is how the cattle war got started, if you want to know it. Tunstall got mixed up in it through McSween and Murphy’s troubles. McSween had worked for Murphy as his lawyer. Later McSween joined forces with Chisum and the trouble got worse.”

  “The Murphy bunch had come to Lincoln before McSween and Tunstall got there. Murphy and Dolan had been filling government contracts for beef and provisions. McSween was hired by Murphy to prosecute the Chisum cowboys for cattle rustling. McSween found out that Chisum was only taking his own cattle from the Murphy boys, so he quit Murphy and started up with Tunstall, who had come in from England to settle in this country. He raised blooded horses and ranched cattle on the Feliz.”

  “From this time on there were two factions fighting to get the business. Each accused the other of cattle stealing. I guess both of them were right about it.”

  “The Murphy bunch had the backing of the Santa Fe Ring, which included Tom Catron, U.S. District Attorney, and his brother-in-law. Of course they were not out in the open with it, but during the cattle war Old Tom took over the Murphy-Dolan property. All the politicians belonged to the Santa Fe Ring, even judges and attorneys.”

  “Brady, the sheriff, wasn’t any better than anyone else up there. He was a Catron man and he did just as they told him. He had threatened to kill Tunstall several times. That attorney that prosecuted me in Lincoln County that time and the judge too- were Catron men. How could a person get justice among them? The law wasn’t no good.”

  “Later on the governor was put out of office by the President of the United States.”

  THE WEST END OF LINCOLN

  Showing the rear of the Murphy Building, where Billy the Kid was confined

  “Tunstall and McSween were ranching together on the Feliz ranch of Tunstall’s. McSween was taking care of the estate of Old Man Fritz. He collected on an insurance policy, and Murphy claimed that Fritz, his former partner at Stanton, owed the money to him. They had a lot of trouble about McSeeen’s law fee. Finally, Murphy got a judgment or attachment against McSween and started to pick up partnership property of Tunstall’s. We turned the cattle over to the law. Tunstall had a herd of fine horses of his own. He decided that we would drive the horses over to Lincoln and surrender them until the case was cleared up.”

  “On the eighteenth of February Tunstall picked Dick Brewer, me, Widenmann, and I believe that John Middleton went along with us with the horses on the drive to town. While we were on the way to Lincoln, a sheriff’s posse, headed by Billy Morton, rode into the ranch. They found that we were gone to Lincoln so they started after us. Some of their boys took the cattle to Seven Rivers while the rest of them came after us. We had crossed the country and was well up in the mountains when we heard them coming. We tried to get Tunstall to ride for it as we were outnumbered. He didn’t want to leave his herd. He said that they wouldn’t do anything, but we decided to run for it. We stood off and watched them approach the herd. They killed Tunstall in cold blood and went on into Lincoln. Afterward we rode in town and the boys went out and got Tunstall’s body. None of the Murphy boys were present at the funeral of Tunstall when we buried his body behind the Tunstall store. And it was good for them that they stayed away. Tunstall was a good man. He had been good to me and treated me like a gentleman. I lost the best friend I ever had when they killed him. I swore that day that I would make them pay with their lives for this dirty deed.”

  “Judge Wilson, a friend of ours, swore in Dick Brewer as constable and gave him a warrant for the arrest of the murderers of Tunstall. Dick took me, Henry Brown, Fred Wayte, Charlie Bowdre, Frank McNab, and a few others to go after them. The hunt began for the murderers, who had left Lincoln for their hideout in the Seven Rivers country.”

  “We rode up on some of them and the fight began. Some of them got away, but we captured Billy Morton, the leader of the mob, and Baker. Both of them had been good pals of mine until I left them at Murphy’s cow camp a few months before. I should have killed them the day I left there.”

  “We put them on horses and started for the Chisum ranch, where we stayed overnight. The next morning we stopped at Roswell on our way to Lincoln. We knew that Murphy’s boys would be waiting for us on the road to Lincoln, so we went the north road over the mountains. We stopped at Agua Negra, in the Capitans, where an argument started between one of our posse and Frank McNab. McNab had to kill one of our men during the argument. Then Morton and Baker started to run for it. I didn’t want to take any chance of losing them, so I had to shoot them. We went on into Lincoln.”

  Brushy Bill’s memories were apt to hit high spots. He returned again and again to the climactic episodes, particularly the ones in which he came near to losing his life, or in which he felt his part had been misrepresented. He was pretty clear about the next big event in the war- the killing of Sheriff William Brady- and he had reason to be, for that was the killing that brought Billy the Kid a death sentence. This is the way the story came out.

  “Sheriff Brady was gunning for me with warrants for cattle stealing. He had caught us at Seven Rivers a short time before and arrested us. He took my six-shooter, a .44 single action with pearl handles that I paid twenty-five dollars for in San Antone. I thought lots of that pearl-handle .44. We got out on bond, but he said he didn’t have that one six-shooter. He gave me the .44 with wooden handles. He still had the warrants and I knew he was still looking for me. He was a Murphy man and had some tough boys on his list of deputies. I didn’t aim to be arrested anymore, I didn’t.”

  “In the forenoon of April 1, Brady, his deputy, Hindman, and County Clerk Billy Matthews- I believe there was someone else, too- were coming down the street from Murphy’s store to the old courthouse when we spied them. Henry Brown, John Middleton, and Fred Wayte were with me behind the adobe wall alongside of Tunstall’s store. Matthews and I had a run-in a few days before, but my bullet missed him. As they passed along the wall, I leveled down on Matthews, but missed him. The other boys were firing at the same time. Brady fell dead on the spot. Hindman died soon after, but Matthews got away and ran behind an adobe wall down the street. Fred and I jumped over the wall and ran into the street where Brady was lying. I pulled my pearl-handled .44 off his body in time to catch a bullet from Matthews’ rifle behind the adobe. It tore the flesh above my right hip and clipped Wayne through the leg. We got back over the wall, then rode out of Lincoln. I wasn’t hurt much- never stopped riding- but Wayte was laid up for a few days. They were armed with rifles and six-shooters. They would have killed us if they had gotten the chance.”

  “Old Dad Peppin testified at my trial in Mesilla that I killed Brady. How did he kno
w who killed anybody? He was the other fellow running down the street with Hindman and Matthews that day when Brady was killed. I was trying to get Matthews first. Nobody knows who killed Brady and Hindman. There was four against four. Nobody tried to find out who killed them, either.”

  Three days after Brady’s death, on April 4, came the fight at Blazer’s Mill, in which Buckshot Roberts, a cranky but courageous old man, gave Billy the Kid and his gang more trouble than they could handle. Brushy Bill knew all about that battle too.

  “I’ll never forget that fight at Blazer’s. Now you take that Buckshot. He was worse than any of them. He was out to get our scalps for the lousy money on our heads. He didn’t fight in that cattle war. He was an outlaw before he went to that country, he was. He was a snake too, he was. But he got what was coming to him that day at Blazer’s place.”

  “Buckshot was run out of Texas by the Rangers. He landed in Lincoln County. He came over to San Patricio, where I had a house, with Murphy’s gang one time to raid us out. Then a few days before he come up to Blazer’s, he stopped at my place in San Patricio and started an argument with Bowdre. I ran him off. Then he came back later as Charlie and I was leaving that night. He shot at us but we rode out of it. That’s the reason I was trying so hard to kill him at Blazer’s.”

  “We had warrants for his arrest. Dick was a deputy and we were with him. He got Brewer, though. Almost got me. But Bowdre got him.”*

  *Brushy never explained what he meant that Buckshot Roberts “almost got him” but history tells us that at one point Billy charged the building and exchanged gunfire with Roberts. He made it to him only to knocked senseless by the barrel of Robert’s empty rifle, thus ending the battle for Billy.

  CHAPTER 3: BLOOD IN THE STREETS

  THE THREE-DAY battle in Lincoln, July, 17, 18, and 19, 1878, was the end of the struggle for the McSween faction. It was a bloody business, and Brushy Bill Roberts described it as if every detail had been burned into his memory with a branding iron.

  “John Copeland was appointed sheriff of Lincoln County to succeed Brady. He served until he was removed by the governor. Then Dad Peppin was appointed sheriff.

  “Before he was appointed, Old Peppin worked for Coughlan, who was buying our cattle. We would take a herd of horses up to Tascosa to sell, and we drove cattle back for Coghlan at Three Rivers. Peppin skinned stolen cattle too, he did. That was rough country then. It was dog eat dog, that’s all.”

  “Jimmy Dolan run the Murphy store in Lincoln in the Murphy building where I was in jail when I killed those two guards. They had large cattle interests and were selling to the army and the Indian agency. They would steal cattle from Chisum and we’d get them back for him.”

  “We were friends with Chisum until he lied to me over that cattle business. He promised to pay us boys a dollar a head to get his cattle back from Murphy. Then he didn’t want to pay off. In that war he and McSween promised to give us $500 apiece to fight for them. We’d have won that war too, if those nigger soldiers of Dudley’s had been kept out. We had the Murphy gang whipped, we did.”

  “McSween had been hiding out at Chisum’s ranch. They had threatened to kill him. We went over to the ranch to get him and bring him back to Lincoln. The sheriff’s posse followed us and we had a fight right there at Chisum’s. We whipped them and they left. We took McSween back with us, too, we did. As we rode into Lincoln, Peppin and his posse started to fighting us. The real battle broke out a little later when we took over Montana’s house across the street from the tower where Peppin’s posse was holed up. Some of our boys went into Tunstall’s store and the rest of us went into McSween’s house next door. They had filled Murphy’s building with their men. They put men on the hillside just south of town until some of our men shot them loose.”

  “They started firing on us as we rode in that day, so we fought back at them. On the last day, Colonel Dudley rode into town with those nigger soldiers. He demanded that McSween stop the fighting. We told him, ‘They started it- now go and stop them, will you? As long as they shoot at us, we intend to protect ourselves.”

  “He told McSween that he couldn’t interfere, that the sheriff had the matter in hand. But he went and run some of our men out of town, he did. Why did he do that, if he couldn’t interfere? Anyway we didn’t surrender to the mob.”

  “Then they set fire to the building to smoke us out. We kept fighting all that day, though. We had them whipped until the army came into town. If we could have kept them niggers out there at Stanton, we would have whipped Peppin’s posse. We didn’t lose any men until that night. We had gotten a few of their men up there on the hillside.”

  “While the house was burning, Mrs. McSween entered Dudley’s camp and begged him to stop the fighting. He said that he did not have the authority to interfere. But some of his nigger soldiers were up on the side of that hill firing at us with the Murphy men.”

  “By dark the house had burned, except the kitchen, which was nearly gone. About dusk in the evening, a little after dark, we decided to make a run for it. The women had already left the house. The building was caving in from the fire.”

  “There was a window in the east side of the kitchen. The door opened on the northeast corner into an area way between the house and an adobe wall. There was a board fence between the house and corral, running north and south, with a gate at the northeast corner of the yard. Tunstall’s store building was east of the board fence on the other side of the corral where we kept the horses. Some of the murphy men were just across the river, which run past the north of the house. The gate in the board fence opened toward Tunstall’s store.”

  “We opened the back door and looked out just as Bob Beckwith and some of them niggers started to come in.”

  “Harvey Morris, who was studying law with McSween, stepped out of the kitchen door first. I was right behind him, and Jose Chavez was behind me. Chavez was followed by McSween, Romero, and Samora. Morris was shot down in front of me. I ran through the gate with both .44’s blazing, and Jose Chavez was right behind me. He and I ran toward Tunstall’s store, was fired at, and then turned toward the river. A bullet went through my hat as I come out the gate. Lost my hat and one six-shooter crossing the water. We ran down the other side of the river. There was brush and undergrowth all along there.”

  “We all left the house together, but McSween, Samora, and Romero were driven back by the bullets when they reached the gate. They turned and ran back to the small enclosure between the house and the adobe wall, where Bob Beckwith was standing as I came through the door. I think one of my bullets killed him there in that enclosure. They started for the gate the second time but were driven back to the small enclosure where all three were killed by John Jones, John Kinney, and those nigger soldiers of Dudley’s. O’Folliard, Salazar, and the rest of our boys started through. All of them escaped except Salazar, who was cut down by the door. They thought he was dead. He crawled out that night after they left. He told me how McSween and the rest fell over there.”

  “I met Tom O’Folliard at Gallegos’ house in San Patricio a few days afterward. Tom saw all of it. He was still in the burning house.”

  “We stayed at my place in San Patricio after that and tried to work on a ranch. We tried to settle down, but they wouldn’t let me alone, they wouldn’t. I wanted to make my home in this country, but they run me out. They made outlaws of us, that’s all. We had to live some way. So we saw to it that we did make a living.”

  This is an interesting part of Brushy’s narrative, the claim that Billy the Kid maintained a home in San Patricio, New Mexico. It stands to reason that if Billy had a home there then there should be some record of it. The difficulty lies in the many aliases used by The Kid during this period. Census records show that in 1880 Billy the Kid, using the alias “Wm. Bonny”, was staying with Charles Bowdre and his wife in Fort Sumner, NM. This census was enumerated over three days from June 17-19. Brushy stated that he would often go back and forth between Lincoln, Fort Sumner, S
an Patricio, and various sheep camps in the area so it is not unusual for him to be in Fort Sumner with the Bowdre family at this time.

  San Patricio was only about 15 miles from Lincoln but was about 120 miles from Fort Sumner, about 3 days ride for a cowboy traveling under normal speeds. The San Patricio census was taken on June 16, 1880. San Patricio is, of course, where the Gallegos family lived as did the Chavez family. Both are listed on the census along with many other Hispanic families as at this time San Patricio was a Hispanic town. As a matter of fact, out of the 230 residents recorded as living in San Patricio, there are just exactly two men with Anglo names. The first, John Newcomb, who was from Missouri, 49 years old, and living there with his wife.

  The second man, John S. Murphy, was single, 20 years old, and from Texas. John S. Murphy lists no relatives and his occupation is supplied as a laborer. Could this be another alias of Billy the Kid? If so, could he have been enumerated in the June 16th census and then arrive by July 19th in time to be recorded at Fort Sumner? Possibly, but on the June 16th census in San Patricio there is a line through John S. Murphy’s name. He is not deceased or he would not be listed. Perhaps he was not present? Among other questions the census asks the following: “Is the person (on the day on the enumerator’s visit) sick or temporarily disabled so as to be unable to attend to ordinary business or duties? If so, what is the sickness or disability?”