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There was no law in those days. Public opinion and the six-shooter settled most all cases.
—FRANK COE
KID ANTRIM DID NOT ride across New Mexico Territory by himself. On October 2, 1877, he was spotted with a gang of rustlers on the old Butterfield Overland Mail route in southwestern New Mexico’s Cooke’s Canyon. Once again he had made a bad choice of associates—although as a fugitive himself, he had few options. The leader of the outlaw band, which liked to call itself “The Boys,” was Jesse Evans. Evans was approximately six years older than the Kid, and he stood five feet six inches tall, weighed around 140 pounds, and had gray eyes and light hair. Pat Garrett wrote that of the two, the Kid was slightly taller and a little heavier. Evans’s early history is as hard to pin down as Henry McCarty’s. At different times, he claimed both Missouri and Texas as his birthplace. He may have been the Jesse Evans who was arrested with his parents in Kansas in 1871, for passing counterfeit money. Tried before the U.S. District Court in Topeka, this Jesse was convicted and fined $500. Because he was so young, he received no jail time and was “most kindly admonished by the court.”
Evans came to New Mexico Territory in 1872 and worked with cattle king John S. Chisum on the Pecos. That consisted primarily of stealing horses from the Mescalero Apaches and delivering them up to Chisum. It only got worse from there. By the time he and the Kid crossed paths, Evans had become one of the most hated desperadoes in southern New Mexico. Teaming up with the equally despised Mesilla Valley “rancher” John Kinney, he headed a gang of horse and cattle thieves numbering, at times, as many as thirty men. A cold-blooded killer and accomplished gunman, Evans was used to doing as he pleased with little fear of the law or anyone else. When his harshest critic, Mesilla Valley Independent editor Albert J. Fountain, urged the local citizenry to capture and lynch Evans and his gang, Evans threatened Fountain’s life (more than once), saying he would give the editor a “free pass to hell.” It was no idle threat.
The Boys, including the Kid, made their way across the playas, mountains, and deserts of southern New Mexico, freely taking the best delicacies, or what passed for delicacies, that each saloon or stopping place had to offer, ordering their nervous hosts to “chalk it up.” At Mesilla, Kid Antrim stole a splendid little racing mare that just happened to belong to the daughter of the county sheriff. The Boys continued eastward from the Mesilla Valley, traveling over San Augustin Pass, across the White Sands, and to the village of Tularosa, which they terrorized one evening with their carousing and the firing off of their ample supply of guns. The desperadoes next crossed the Sacramento Mountains and finally ended up at the Seven Rivers settlement in the Pecos Valley, approximately 250 miles from Mesilla. By this point, the Kid was no longer with them, having separated from the main party under Evans.
Hardly more than a spot on the road, Seven Rivers consisted of a single flat-roofed adobe of several rooms, one of which contained a well-stocked store. Out back were several gravestones; close by, between low dirt banks, flowed the Pecos River. The “settlement” was actually a hodgepodge of scattered ranches and homesteads, surrounded by miles and miles of the finest grazing land in the Southwest, most notably the Chisum Range on the east side of the Pecos. Named for John S. Chisum, the range stretched from Seven Rivers north to the mouth of the Hondo, a distance of approximately sixty miles. Over the last few years, it had supported between twenty thousand and sixty thousand head of cattle, beef that went to fill government contracts at military posts and Indian reservations in New Mexico and Arizona. It had also supported some of Chisum’s Seven Rivers neighbors, who were not above helping themselves to his beeves, a situation that had erupted into the short-lived Pecos War earlier in the year.
The Seven Rivers store was owned by small-time rancher Heiskell Jones, and this is where the Kid turned up by mid-October 1877, possibly horseless after a run-in with Apache Indians in the Guadalupe Mountains—at least that is the story Antrim told. He was no longer Henry Antrim or even Kid Antrim. Now he was William H. Bonney. Some have speculated that he settled on Bonney because his father was not Michael McCarty at all, and his real father was a former husband or lover of his mother’s whose last name was Bonney. Regardless of what the Kid called himself, Heiskell’s wife, Barbara, took the gun-toting boy in. Known affectionately up and down the Pecos as “Ma’am Jones,” Barbara had a large family of her own to care for (between 1855 and 1878, she would have a total of nine boys and one daughter), yet she was famous for feeding, doctoring, and sheltering neighbors and strangers alike.
As related time and again by those who knew him, William H. Bonney had a charm or magnetism that was irresistible to the ladies; they wanted to mother him or take him for a roll in the hay. Ma’am wanted to mother him. “My mother loved him,” recalled Sam Jones. “He was always courteous and deferential to her. She said he had the nicest manners of any young man in the country. She never could bear to hear anyone speak ill of him.” And both Sam and Frank Jones agreed that if “Billy had been a bad boy, Mother would not have wanted him around. And she was a pretty good judge of men.” Heiskell Jones freighted his own goods from Las Vegas to Seven Rivers, and the Kid went with Heiskell on one or more of these long trips. Billy also developed a close friendship with twenty-four-year-old John Jones, the eldest of the brothers. The Kid’s time at the Jones place may have lasted as few as three weeks or as long as three months. However long he stayed, it was plenty of time to make the Jones family loyal Billy the Kid supporters (and Pat Garrett haters) for the rest of their lives.
By this time, the Kid had become obsessed with guns and was impressive in his handling of them. Lily Casey, no fan of Billy’s, saw the Kid during this period and remembered that he “was active and graceful as a cat. At Seven Rivers he practiced continually with pistol or rifle, often riding at a run and dodging behind the side of his mount to fire, as the Apaches did. He was very proud of his ability to pick up a handkerchief or other objects from the ground while riding at a run.” Lily’s mother, the widow Ellen Casey, was bound for Texas with a herd of cattle and Billy hit her up for a job. But Mrs. Casey sensed, as her daughter later remarked, that Billy “was not addicted to regular work.” Lily and her brother, Robert, considered the Kid little more than a bum—he did not get the job.
Sometime that fall, Billy Bonney appeared at Frank Coe’s ranch on the upper Rio Ruidoso, looking for work. Coe was known to be both handy with a gun and quick to use one. But the Kid looked so young that Coe had a hard time taking him seriously. “I invited him to stop with us until he could find something to do,” Frank recalled. “There wasn’t much entertainment those days, except to hunt.” But there was entertainment in watching Billy play with his shootin’ irons: “He spent all his spare time cleaning his six-shooter and practicing shooting. He could take two six-shooters, loaded and cocked, one on each hand, his fore-finger between the trigger and guard, and twirl one in one direction and the other in the other direction, at the same time.”
Billy soon found something to do. A short time earlier, on October 17, Jesse Evans and three of The Boys had been corralled by a posse under Lincoln County sheriff William Brady. Now they were being held in a miserable hole in the ground known as the Lincoln County jail. Completed that same month, the jail cells were in a dugout ten feet deep, its walls lined with square-hewn timber. The ceiling was made from logs chinked with mud and covered with dirt, and the only entrance was a single door. Prisoners were forced to climb down a ladder, which was then withdrawn and the door shut tight. Pat Garrett condemned the jail as “unfit for a dog-kennel.” Evans and the other prisoners whiled away the time playing cards and boasting that their friends would soon come to break them out. And sure enough, by mid-November, several of The Boys, among them Billy Bonney, had a plan to rescue their leader from the Lincoln hellhole.
IF ANY SINGLE CHUNK of land embodied the American West, it was Lincoln County. The largest county in the United States at that time (nearly thirty thousand square miles), it spilled across the entire southeast section of New Mexico Territory. Stark plains rolled away to the horizon in its eastern half, bisected by slivers of water with evocative names like the Pecos and Rio Hondo. To the west, its rugged Sacramento, Capitan, and Guadalupe mountain ranges rose to nearly twelve thousand feet at their highest point. There were very few settlements, except for several ranching operations and the occasional Hispanic village or placita. The county’s human population numbered approximately two thousand; cattle numbered in the tens of thousands. A sole military post, Fort Stanton, was located just nine miles west of the county seat, also named Lincoln, and was there to keep watch over the still-wild Mescalero Apaches.
Nestled in the Rio Bonito Valley, the town of Lincoln was like other territorial settlements. Several adobe homes and stores, their thick mud-brick walls serving as a perfect insulation against the wearying heat of summer and the biting cold of winter, were scattered for a mile on both sides of a hard-packed dirt road. In the heart of the village, on the north side of this one and only street, stood the torreón, a three-story tower of rock and adobe constructed by residents years before as their main defense against plundering Indians. The town saw a fairly steady stream of settlers, who came to register land transactions or conduct business with the courts, at the same time purchasing supplies, picking up mail, and hearing the latest news.
The Hispanic citizens of Lincoln, who made up the majority of the town’s population, irrigated small fields on the Bonito, tended sheep flocks, and worked where they could as day laborers. Fort Stanton offered both civilian job opportunities and a market for livestock and produce. A few Lincoln families were involved in the overland freighting business; Hispanos were famed arrieros (muleteers) dating back to Spanish colonial times. To outsiders, this place was a world both exotic and backward.
Lincoln, New Mexico Territory.
Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico
Most Anglos in the territory held strongly racist views toward Hispanos (and vice versa). Certainly, one could find affluent Hispanos in the territorial government and, more commonly, in county positions. But it was painfully clear to Hispanos what their place was expected to be. On October 10, 1875, Lincoln farmer Gregorio Balenzuela made the mistake of calling Alexander “Ham” Mills a gringo. Mills pulled out his gun and shot the man dead, after which Mills rode out of town unmolested. A year later, the New Mexico governor pardoned Mills for the murder. No wonder the Spanish-speaking Billy the Kid, who defied the gringo laws and humiliated the sheriffs and their posses, who rode like an Apache and kicked up his heels as gracefully as any vaquero, became, if not a favorite, certainly a sympathetic figure to native New Mexicans. To them, he was simply Billito or el Chivato.
IN THE EARLY-MORNING HOURS of November 17, 1877, the dark figures of more than twenty horsemen passed quietly into Lincoln. It was The Boys, including Billy, and they rode straight to the county jail. At the jail, ten men dismounted and slipped through the main door, which was curiously unlocked. The jailer was asleep inside, but he soon awoke to a gun barrel pointed at his head. It was 3:00 A.M., and the jailer watched as The Boys went to work on the trapdoor to the jail cells. The gunmen had brought heavy, rock-filled sacks, and they used these to bust through the wooden door to the dungeonlike cells below. Jesse Evans and the other gang members were waiting for them. A confederate had been able to get files and wood augurs to the prisoners, and Jesse and his pals had been busily working on their shackles in preparation for the breakout. Jesse and the others climbed up the ladder lowered to them, some with their leg braces still attached. It was still dark and tranquil when the bunch rode out of town; most of Lincoln’s citizens did not get the news of the brazen escape until well after sunup.
For Evans and The Boys, it was now back to business as usual, stealing livestock and making death threats, with little to fear from the law. Not so for Billy—the law nabbed him a month later at Seven Rivers, where he was apprehended with a pair of horses that belonged to English rancher John Henry Tunstall. The Kid may have stolen the horses himself or traded with one of The Boys, but regardless, it was now his turn to spend some time in the subterranean Lincoln jail, and he did not like it one bit. He apparently requested a meeting with Tunstall, which must have gone well, because the Englishman had the Kid released and gave him a job on his Rio Feliz ranch.
Billy may have promised to testify against his friends in exchange for his freedom. The relationship between the Kid and Evans had been strained ever since Billy stole the little racing mare back in Mesilla. The mare had been Sheriff Mariano Barela’s daughter’s favorite, and the sheriff, Billy discovered a little too late, was a crony of Evans’s. Billy also may have been ticked off that none of The Boys came to his rescue in Lincoln like he had done for them. Whatever Billy’s reasons, by joining Tunstall he had officially taken sides in one of the most famous and bitter feuds in the American West, an ugly struggle for profits and economic dominance that became known as the Lincoln County War.
For years, the mercantile firm of L. G. Murphy & Co. and its successor, J. J. Dolan & Co., commonly known as “The House,” had the upper hand in just about every moneymaking venture in the region. It operated for a time as the post trader at Fort Stanton and received numerous government contracts for beef, corn, flour, and other provisions. In Lincoln, The House maintained a brewery, saloon, and restaurant, as well as a large store. It also performed, on a limited basis, the services of a bank. Yet The House’s unashamed greed (even though many of its business practices were not unusual for the time), its long reach into local government, and its connection to territorial power brokers in New Mexico’s capital—the infamous “Santa Fe Ring”—earned it considerable ill will among the locals.
“Only those who have experienced it can realize the extent to which Murphy & Co. dominated the country and controlled its people, economy, and politics,” remembered one county resident. “All Lincoln County was cowed and intimidated by them. To oppose them was to court disaster.” Three men—John Henry Tunstall, Alexander A. McSween, and John S. Chisum—did oppose The House’s regional supremacy, and it cost two of them their lives.
A twenty-four-year-old Englishman with plenty of gumption—and capital to go with it—John Henry Tunstall first arrived in Lincoln County in November 1876, determined to carve out his own modest empire from its vast lands. He was also a sure enough dude, complete with tailored suits (he had a penchant for Harris tweed), riding out-fits, and top boots. His hair was sandy colored and wavy, though well groomed, and he sported chin whiskers and a pencil-thin mustache. In photographs, he appears as stiff and aristocratic as the man on the Prince Albert tobacco tins, but those close to the young Englishman thought he was good-looking and personable. He was a prolific letter writer, expounding at length to his father in England (his chief financial backer) on the Wild West and predicting that he would make a fortune there. His plans could just as easily have been written by a member of The House: “I propose to confine my operations to Lincoln County, but I intend to handle it in such a way as to get the half of every dollar that is made in the county by anyone, and with our means we could get things into that shape in three years, if we only used two thirds of our capital in the undertaking.”
John Henry Tunstall.
Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico
Tunstall had focused his sights on southeastern New Mexico because of a chance meeting with Lincoln attorney Alexander A. McSween at a Santa Fe hotel. McSween, a Scotsman ten years Tunstall’s senior, was new to the Territory as well, having arrived with his wife, Susan, in March 1875. With a drooping mustache as thick as his Scottish brogue, McSween had initially worked as a lawyer for The House, where he got an insider’s look into the firm’s many business dealings. Within a few months, McSween had used this privileged information to help Tunstall buy a cattle ranch and open a mercantile store in Lincoln. The pair also established a bank; cattleman John S. Chisum served as the bank’s president. Chisum had his own grievances against The House, whose loose policy when buying beef for its government contracts had served as an open invitation for rustlers to steal from Chisum’s herds on the Pecos.
The carefully plotted competition from Tunstall and McSween came at a time when The House was financially on its knees (the principals were not the best businessmen). And the fact that Tunstall was an upper-class English Protestant, while The House hothead, Jimmy Dolan, and his partner, John Riley, were both Irish Catholic, made this even worse. Born in County Galway, Ireland, in 1848, Dolan had emigrated to the United States at age six. During the Civil War, he had been a drummer boy for one of the colorful Zouave regiments from New York State, and it was as a U.S. infantryman that he had come to Lincoln County. He was short, just five feet, two and one-half inches tall, and his temper was even shorter.
Alexander McSween.
Robert G. McCubbin Collection
Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico
James “Jimmy” Dolan.
Robert G. McCubbin Collection
Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico
By early February 1878, both sides had spread vicious rumors about the other; both had attacked each other publicly in the territorial press; and both had spewed out a few choice personal threats. Both had also put men on their payrolls who knew the inner workings of a Colt six-shooter and a Winchester repeater. The House, what with its cozy relationship with the district court, had orchestrated criminal charges (embezzlement) and a civil suit against McSween. But Dolan’s legal shenanigans achieved their finest moment on February 7, when he secured a writ of attachment against McSween. Dolan turned the writ over to Sheriff William Brady, another House tool, who happily attached any and all property of both McSween and Tunstall: store, lands, cattle, horses—even such personal items as portraits of Tunstall’s parents.
The first blood spilled in the Lincoln County War came just eleven days later at approximately 5:30 P.M. Tunstall and four of his men, including the Kid, were on their way to Lincoln with a small herd of horses. Tunstall’s party, strung out over a distance of a few hundred yards, had just crested a divide and was descending through the rugged hills above the Ruidoso Valley when they flushed a flock of wild turkeys. Two of Tunstall’s men started after the dusky birds; moments later, shots rang out on their back trail. Billy and John Middleton, who had been bringing up the rear, came forward at a gallop. Behind them, riding hard, was a party of nearly twenty mounted men, members of a posse sent to gather up Tunstall’s horses, except it was obvious that this posse was bent on more than simply attaching livestock. Middleton raced toward Tunstall, who had remained near the horse herd, and shouted at him to flee. Agitated and confused by the gunfire and commotion, Tunstall did nothing.
“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.
Richard “Dick” Brewer, leader of the Regulators.
Robert G. McCubbin Collection
When Billy got word that Brewer had been killed, he exploded with anger, yelling at Dr. Blazer to put Roberts out of the house. Blazer refused. The Kid then told the old man he would kill him if he did not do what he was told, but Blazer said Roberts would do the same thing if he attempted to force him out of the office. Billy called Blazer a damned old fool and threatened to burn his house down, but Blazer, unshakable as ever, responded that there was nothing he could do to stop that.
Demoralized, disgusted, and shot all to hell, the Regulators stormed off to the corral, got on their horses, and rode away, leaving the Blazers to deal with Brewer’s body and the wounded Roberts. Roberts died the next day, and he and Brewer were buried side by side on a hill overlooking the settlement. Frank Coe later said that Andrew Roberts was probably the bravest man he ever met.
FOR THE REGULATORS, THE next ninety days were a blur of shooting scrapes, bailes, and hard riding. On April 18, a grand jury indicted Billy and three of his fellow Regulators for the murder of Sheriff Brady, and Billy was again named, along with five other Regulators, for the killing of Roberts. The House forces received their fair share of attention from the grand jury as well. Jesse Evans and, as accessories, Jimmy Dolan and Billy Mathews were among those indicted for the murder of John Henry Tunstall. Alexander McSween, on the other hand, achieved a minor victory when the grand jury exonerated him of the criminal charge of embezzlement, at the same time commenting that it regretted “that a spirit of persecution has been shown in this matter.”
Despite the indictments, the Regulators remained just as determined to hunt down Tunstall’s killers. McSween, acting upon the authority of Tunstall’s father in England, posted a $5,000 reward for the apprehension and conviction of the culprits. The Scotsman sounded a lot like Billy when he wrote Tunstall’s sister that “There will be no peace here until his murderers have paid the debt.”
No peace was right. Gun battles between the two factions broke out wherever they met (or, rather, caught up to each other)—in the streets of Lincoln, at San Patricio in the Ruidoso Valley, and even at Chisum’s South Spring ranch on the Pecos. Frank MacNab, who had replaced Dick Brewer as the Regulators’ captain, was killed in an ambush on April 29. Two weeks later, the Regulators shot and killed Manuel Segovia, known as “the Indian,” in a raid on a Dolan cow camp (Segovia had been a member of the posse that murdered Tunstall). The feud consumed everyone and everything in the region, and it was virtually impossible for anyone to remain neutral. The Dolan men forced settlers to feed and shelter them, or worse—to join their posses—and the Regulators did the same. Jimmy Dolan brought in even more gunmen from the Seven Rivers country and the Mesilla Valley.
The final showdown came in mid-July in the county seat, in what would be called the “Big Killing.” McSween had been dodging the Dolan crowd for weeks when he received news that appeared to be a dramatic turn for the better: William Rynerson, the district attorney and a fierce Dolan supporter, and Governor Axtell were to be removed from office. Weary of roughing it, McSween was determined to return to Lincoln with a strong show of force, nearly sixty men in all. Riding with him, of course, was eighteen-year-old Billy Bonney, who had demonstrated that not only could he handle a gun and ride as well as any man in Lincoln County, but he also had grit—and, even better, he shot to kill. The plan was that McSween would go to his home, the Regulators would secure key buildings in town, and they would wait. Whatever happened, McSween decided, nothing could make him leave his home again—not alive, that is.
Just after dark on July 14, a Sunday, McSween and his followers rode into Lincoln. The night’s full moon had not yet spilled its light into the canyon, which meant the riders could take up their positions without being detected. The structures being secured were the Ike Ellis store and dwelling, the José Montaño store, and the McSween house, all thick adobe buildings. Sheriff George W. Peppin, Lincoln County’s most recent sheriff and, naturally, a Dolan man, was staying at Wortley’s Hotel, as was Jimmy Dolan. Most of the sheriff’s men were out hunting the Regulators; the dozen or so he had in town were divided between Wortley’s and the old torreón.
News of McSween’s arrival with his large force came soon after dawn. One of Reverend Taylor Ealy’s pupils burst into the Ealy residence in the old Tunstall store: “There will be no school today,” the boy said excitedly, “as both parties are in town.” Sheriff Peppin sent a rider to find the rest of his posse and tell them to hurry back to Lincoln.
Billy was in the McSween house along with fourteen other gunmen, as well as McSween and his wife, Susan; Susan’s sister Elizabeth Shield and her five children; and, ironically enough, a health seeker by the name of Harvey Morris. The flat-roofed adobe house was built in the shape of a “U” and contained as many as nine rooms; the opening of the U faced the Bonito River. Billy and the other combatants began to prepare for a long siege, placing heavy adobe bricks in the windows and carving gun ports in the walls. Later that day, a loudmouthed deputy named Jack Long was sent to serve warrants on the Kid and others at the McSween place. Four months earlier, an inebriated Long had told the Reverend Ealy that he wished a whore had come to Lincoln instead of the minister and that he had once helped hang a preacher in Arizona. Long’s typical bluster did not go far with the boys at McSween’s, though. A volley of gunfire sent him heading backward.
By that evening, the rest of the Dolan faction was back in town, approximately forty men in all, including Jesse Evans—free on bail from the Tunstall murder charge—and Mesilla Valley hoodlum John Kinney. The two sides began shooting and yelling, and this continued sporadically into the next day and night. Fresh water was a problem for the defenders in both the McSween house and the Montaño store, and communication was nearly impossible between the three groups of McSween fighters. But at the same time, Sheriff Peppin was unable to get any real advantage. Nothing other than a cannonball was going to penetrate those solid adobe walls—and that is exactly what the sheriff had in mind. In a note to Fort Stanton’s post commander, Lieutenant Colonel Nathan A. M. Dudley, Peppin requested the “loan” of a mountain howitzer to aid him in persuading the McSween men to surrender. Peppin, who held a commission as a deputy U.S. marshal, asked Dudley to do this “in favor of the law.” The law, however, was the new Posse Comitatus Act, passed on June 16, 1878, and it specifically prevented the use of U.S. soldiers as law enforcement.
Dudley sent his regrets to the sheriff via a courier, and that should have ended the matter. But as the courier was riding into Lincoln, he was fired upon, allegedly by men in the McSween home. Dudley ordered an investigation, which again resulted in some of his men coming under fire. Then, on the evening of July 18, Jimmy Dolan made a trip to the fort to see Dudley. The fifty-two-year-old lieutenant colonel, known as “Gold Lace Dudley” because of his penchant for accessorizing his uniforms, was a career army man with not much of a career. He was arrogant, noisy, vindictive, a heavy drinker, and, not surprisingly, generally unpopular with his fellow officers. And he clearly favored one side over the other in the Lincoln County War. Earlier in the year, he had been defended in a court martial by Thomas Benton Catron, the U.S. attorney for New Mexico, who also happened to be one of the wealthiest men in the Territory and a central figure in the Santa Fe Ring. A longtime Murphy-Dolan backer, Catron now controlled The House’s assets, having foreclosed on J. J. Dolan & Co. back in April.
According to a witness who claimed to have overheard the conversation between Dudley and Dolan, the post commander told Dolan to go back to Lincoln and keep the McSween party at bay and he would be there by noon the next day. Later that same evening, Dudley consulted with his officers about sending troops into town. Their sole purpose, he said, would be to protect the women and children and any noncombatants caught in the cross fire. The officers knew better than to disagree with their commanding officer, and they unanimously concurred with his plan.
Lieutenant Colonel Nathan A. M. Dudley.
Collection of the Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion, U.S. Army Military History Institute
The next day, at approximately 11:00 A.M., the sound of drums was heard to the west of Lincoln, the rat-a-tat-tat growing louder as a military column came into sight. Dudley rode in the lead, followed by four officers, eleven buffalo soldiers (black cavalrymen), and twenty-four white infantrymen. The soldiers wore their full-dress uniforms—nothing less would do for Gold Lace Dudley. Far overshadowing the spiffy appearance of Dudley’s command, however, were the twelve-pound mountain howitzer and Gatling gun they had with them. The McSween forces dared not fire on the soldiers, and as the column moved past the McSween home, Dolan’s gunmen followed along, taking up better positions around the Scotsman’s house.
McSween and his men had definitely not prepared for troopers with artillery. Dudley established his camp across from the Montaño store and ordered his howitzer aimed at the building’s front door. This was too much for the defenders inside, and they prepared themselves to flee the building. They covered their heads with blankets to hide their identities and burst out of the store, running east down the street to join their compadres in the Ellis store. When the artillery was faced in that direction, a similar scene ensued, the escaping Regulators firing parting shots at Sheriff Peppin’s men who were pursuing them. Within a matter of minutes, McSween lost two-thirds of his fighters.
McSween wrote a hasty note to Dudley, which was carried out of the house by his ten-year-old niece: “Would you have the kindness to let me know why soldiers surround my house? Before blowing up my property I would like to know the reason.” Dudley responded flippantly through his adjutant: “I am directed by the commanding officer to inform you that no soldiers have surrounded your house, and that he desires to hold no correspondence with you; if you desire to blow up your house, the commanding officer does not object providing it does not injure any U.S. soldiers.” Susan McSween left the house next and pleaded separately with Sheriff Peppin and Dudley. Both men were hostile to her, especially Dudley. Susan returned to her husband’s side. If there was ever any doubt as to whose side Dudley was on, there was none now.
Sheriff Peppin now turned his full attention on the Scotsman’s home. If McSween and his remaining men would not surrender, then he would burn them out. At about 2:00 P.M., one of Peppin’s men started a fire at the summer kitchen that was situated in the house’s northwest corner. Heavy gunfire prevented the Regulators from extinguishing the flames, but because the house was adobe, the fire burned very slowly, room by room. Coughing and gasping from the smoke, their eyes stinging, the men did what they could to fight the blaze from the inside. There was no water, of course, but by pulling up floorboards and moving furniture, they robbed the flames of fuel. The ceiling, with its wooden vigas and latias, was where the fire had taken hold, however, and there was little that could be done there. But if they could slow the fire enough, it would be dusk before the defenders would be forced to evacuate the home; some of them might get away. Peppin’s men would be anxiously waiting for that moment as well, but it was far better to sell one’s soul with guns ablazin’ than to be consumed alive by the flames.
At about 5:30 P.M., Susan and her sister and the five children were allowed to flee the house. The Ealys, next door in the Tunstall store, were also allowed to leave safely. Once these noncombatants were out of the way, the shooting picked up again. The heat was intense, and the leaping flames cast a bright light upon the hills overlooking the town. Forced by the fire into the final room in the house, the northeast kitchen, it was time for bold and decisive action. Alexander McSween was not a fighter, never had been. Now, overcome with a sense of doom and failure as his home burned down around him, he sat, comatose, with his head down. Billy, though, was exactly the opposite, jumping around the room like a caged cat. He shook McSween and ordered him to get up.
“Boys, I have lost my reason,” McSween cried.
“Mack, now we must run for our lives,” the Kid told him, “it is the only chance for our lives!”
McSween listened as his men went over the escape plan. Five of the defenders, including Billy, would burst out of the house first, drawing the fire of Peppin’s men, after which McSween and the rest were to make their dash for safety. Although the flames illuminated the ground a good distance from the home, the first group got a good jump on the sheriff’s posse before being spotted. Billy saw three of Dudley’s soldiers blasting away at him, or so he later claimed. Morris, the unfortunate health seeker, collapsed in front of the Kid, but he was the only casualty in the first group, the remainder making it safely across the Bonito and into the night. Had McSween and the others followed close on the Kid’s heels, they might have had a chance too, but they did not. The Kid’s party, then, only served to alert the sheriff’s men to the breakout.
When McSween and the rest of his followers did abandon the burning house, they were immediately hit by a deadly spray of bullets that kicked up the dirt around them. They headed for shelter in the backyard. They may not have been in danger of burning alive, but they were still trapped. After a tense several minutes, McSween called out that he wished to surrender. Deputy Robert Beckwith and three other men walked out into the open and approached the Scotsman. When Beckwith came within a few steps, McSween suddenly blurted out that he would never surrender. Gunfire erupted on both sides. Beckwith fell dead and McSween toppled over on top of him, his body pierced by five bullets. Three others in the McSween group, all Hispanos, also fell in the firefight. One, a young Yginio Salazar, was severely wounded and unconscious but Peppin’s men took him for dead. When he came to, Salazar wisely remained motionless until it was safe to drag himself to a friend’s house.
THE KID’S MAD DASH through the gauntlet of Dolan gunmen had been his greatest feat to date, but with the death of Alexander McSween, the Lincoln County War was all but over. Yet there were still hard times ahead, especially for the war’s veterans. Lincoln County continued to be a violent place, and the bitter feelings between the two factions remained as healthy as ever. For many, the future offered little more than a return to routine, dirt-poor lives of punching cows and scratching out crops, but for those like the Kid, whose names appeared on arrest warrants from the district court, there were very few options. The war had molded Billy, tested him, but it had also reinforced a lifestyle of doing and taking what one pleased, regardless of the law. For Billy, it was but a short step from being a desperate and defiant young man to being a full-fledged desperado.