6
If it hadn’t been for the dead horse in the doorway, I wouldn’t be here.
—BILLY THE KID
BILLY BONNEY KNEW THAT Pat Garrett, unlike the sheriffs he had dealt with in the past, could be as hardheaded as a snapping turtle; he would not let go, and he would not quit until the job was finished. And as more and more men went after Billy and his pals, it was getting harder and harder to dodge them—there were only so many roads, so many camps, so many places to hide. The Kid was getting whipped in the territorial press, too. In an editorial of December 3, 1880, the Las Vegas Gazette portrayed the outlaws as a despicable bunch of hardened criminals. And the paper said there were forty or fifty of them. This was a gross exaggeration, of course, but that is what the Kid inspired. And as far as the Gazette was concerned, Bonney was the worst of the lot.
“The gang is under the leadership of ‘Billy the Kid,’ a desperate cuss, who is eligible for the post of captain of any crowd, no matter how mean and lawless,” the paper wrote.
This was the first time he had been referred to in print as “Billy the Kid,” three simple words that rolled off the tongue and into immortality.
The Gazette was doing more than reporting on the outlaws; it was serving notice to the community: “Shall we suffer this horde of outcasts and the scum of society, who are outlawed by a multitude of crimes, to continue their way on the very border of our county? We believe our citizens of San Miguel County to be order loving people, and call upon them to unite in forever wiping out this band to the east of us.”
Billy read the newspapers whenever he could get his hands on them. He read the Gazette editorial soon after its publication, and he attempted some damage control by writing a four-page letter to Governor Wallace, dated Fort Sumner, December 12. “I noticed in the Las Vegas Gazette,” Billy wrote, “a piece which stated that, Billy ‘the’ Kid, the name by which I am known in the Country was the Captain of a Band of Outlaws who hold Forth at the Portales. There is no such Organization in Existence. So the Gentleman must have drawn very heavily on his Imagination.”
Billy went on to explain the recent events at Coyote Springs and the Greathouse-Kuch station. Jimmy Carlyle, he claimed, was shot and killed by the possemen, who believed it was the Kid escaping out the window. Billy also insisted that he had been living at Fort Sumner since he left Lincoln, making a living there as a gambler. His troubles, the Kid told Wallace, were all caused by John S. Chisum. Billy held a considerable grudge against the cattleman because he had never paid the money he allegedly promised the Kid for fighting on the McSween side during the war. Now, Billy firmly believed that Chisum was the mastermind behind Pat Garrett’s campaign to track him down.
Billy assured the governor that “so far as for my being at the head of a band [of outlaws] there is nothing of it.”
Billy’s carefully composed letter was a waste of ink and paper. On December 13, Wallace signed a proclamation offering a reward of “five hundred dollars ($500.-) for the apprehension and arrest of said William Bonney alias ‘The Kid’ and for his delivery to the Sheriff of Lincoln County at the county seat of said county.” The Las Vegas Gazette complained that the $500 reward was too small:
It is no jackrabbit hunt that Garrett and his band, Frank Stewart and his Panhandle boys and the White Oaks rangers are engaged in, but a determined campaign against lawless fellows who have nothing to fear, as the remainder of their lives will be passed behind bars, to pay the penalty of their crimes if they are ever caught. What should be done by the people of this and neighboring counties is to raise a purse of $5,000 to be paid the men engaged in this campaign providing they drive the desperadoes from our border.
JUST BEFORE DAYLIGHT December 18, Garrett led his posse into Fort Sumner. In addition to the six men from the Texas Panhandle posse, he had also picked up four men from Puerto de Luna. With Barney Mason and Frank Stewart, that gave him twelve gunmen. The Kid and gang were not then in the town, but it was believed that they were not far off. Garrett obtained quarters for his exhausted men and told them to get some rest (they had been in the saddle for close to fifteen hours). No sooner had the men gotten settled, though, than Barney Mason busted in and told Garrett that the Kid’s gang was camped in an abandoned building nearby. The possemen jumped up, grabbed their guns, and cautiously proceeded to the adobe Mason pointed out. Peering through the wavy glass windowpanes, they saw a small fire in the fireplace—and the silhouette of a man in front of it. Garrett whispered to his men not to take any chances; they should shoot to kill as soon as they got inside. With that, he kicked in the door and rushed in, followed by several members of the posse.
“My God, don’t shoot, boys!” screamed the man in front of the fireplace. Fortunately, Garrett and the boys held their fire, for the trembling man turned out to be the mail carrier from Las Vegas. The excitement over for the time being, Garrett led the men back to their quarters, where they finally got some much-needed sleep.
Later that morning, Garrett took Mason with him to see what he could find out about the gang’s whereabouts. He told the posse to stay in their quarters; he did not want word to get out about their presence in Sumner. The Kid had many sympathizers who would be eager to alert the outlaw to any danger. And sure enough, one of the first individuals Garrett and Mason ran into was Yginio Garcia, a friend of Billy’s. Garrett at first ordered Garcia not to leave the plaza, but as the lawman was certain that Garcia knew nothing about his posse, he decided it would be advantageous to give Billy the impression that he only had Mason with him. He let Garcia go, who claimed he had urgent business at home, but, as Garrett had suspected, Garcia got a message to Billy about his encounter with the two manhunters.
Garrett and his men kept to themselves the rest of that day and night. The next morning, December 19, Garrett spotted Juan Gallegos, the sixteen-year-old stepson of Thomas Wilcox, loafing about the plaza. Garrett had a strong hunch that the young man had been sent there as a spy for the Kid. He was right. The boy readily admitted that the gang was at the Wilcox-Brazil ranch, east of town. Gallegos’s father and Manuel Brazil were in no way sympathetic to the outlaws, but they had no choice but to put up with them. Garrett easily persuaded young Gallegos to help him lay a trap for the gang.
Garrett next located Kid confederate José Valdez and forced him to write a note to Billy saying that Garrett and the few men with him had departed Fort Sumner for Roswell; all was clear. Garrett then wrote a note of his own to Wilcox and Brazil asking for their cooperation. Garrett handed the two notes to Gallegos, warning him that whatever he did, not to get them mixed up.
The Kid had been anxiously waiting for Gallegos, and when the young man handed him Valdez’s note, the outlaw scanned it and then read it to his pals. They gleefully voiced their contempt for the great Pat Garrett who had seemingly abandoned the chase to go home. The boys then proceeded to boast among themselves about how they had intended to go into Fort Sumner and shoot it out with the sheriff-elect but now that he had run off, they had a good mind to follow him and finish the business once and for all. As the outlaws continued to deride Garrett and anyone else who would oppose them, Gallegos discreetly slipped Garrett’s note to his stepfather.
Back at Fort Sumner, Garrett got his men ready to give the gang a warm reception. He was confident the gang would be in Fort Sumner that night. There were just too many amusements for them to stay away—women, gambling, and liquor made for a powerful triumvirate. Garrett knew that Bowdre’s wife, Manuela, was now living in a room in the old Indian Hospital building. The hospital formed the northeast corner of the complex of buildings that made up Fort Sumner, and the road coming from the Wilcox-Brazil place passed just behind it. Garrett figured that the gang would make the hospital building their first stop, so he placed a guard outside and stationed the rest of his posse inside. Also inside with the posse were a few Hispanic residents whom Garrett was holding in custody for fear that they would attempt to get word to the gang.
At about 8:00 P.M., Garrett, Mason, and posse members Tom Emory and Bob Williams were deep into a game of poker. They had spread a blanket on the floor and were using that as their gambling table. Another posse member, Jim East, was in a corner rolled up in his blanket trying to get some sleep before it was his turn at guard duty. Garrett was not expecting the gang until later in the evening, not for another two hours, at the earliest. Just then, posseman Lon Chambers popped his head in.
“Pat, someone is coming!”
“Get your guns, boys,” Garrett said as he stood up from the floor. “None but the men we want are riding this time of night.”
Garrett, Chambers, and another man stationed themselves on the east porch while Mason and the others took up their positions at the rear west wing, which gave them clear shots in case Billy and the gang rode straight to the plaza without stopping. With the snow cover helping to illuminate the night, Garrett clearly saw the riders Chambers had spotted just moments before. And Billy Bonney could just as easily make out the Indian Hospital and other Sumner buildings, the occasional lantern or candle appearing as warm, flickering orbs in the windows. Billy rode in front with Tom Folliard, but as the gang neared the hospital building, Billy sensed that something was not quite right. That bump of caution had saved his skin before, and he did not hesitate to react to it now. Billy was always looking out for Billy all the time, and he did not bother to pass along his suspicions to his pals. Instead, he said he had just been struck by a sudden craving for a chew of some good tobacco, and Billy Wilson, who was bringing up the rear, had the best tobacco. The Kid gently pulled on his reins and let the others go ahead of him.
By this time, Pat Garrett was standing close up against the adobe wall, where he was well hidden by the shadow of the porch and some harnesses suspended from above. His heartbeat quickened slightly as the riders veered off the main road and headed directly toward him. He recognized Folliard, who was riding in the lead with Tom Pickett. “That’s them,” Garrett whispered to his companions.
Folliard rode on up to the building and halted, the head of his horse just under the porch’s roof. At that moment, Garrett yelled out to the outlaws to throw up their hands. Instead of obeying this command from the darkness, Folliard reached for his six-gun. When Garrett and Chambers saw this, they both jerked the triggers of their Winchester rifles and streaks of fire lit up the air. Folliard’s horse wheeled and took off in a run, its rider crying out in agony—“You never heard a man scream the way he did,” Garrett said later.
Pickett, terrified and yelling at the top of his lungs, spurred his horse to get away, but Garrett drew down on him and fired. Unfortunately the muzzle flash from Chambers’s rifle spoiled his aim, and Pickett was able to escape unscathed.
An instant after Garrett fired on Folliard, Barney Mason and the rest of the posse spotted Billy, Rudabaugh, Bowdre, and Wilson and began blasting away at them. Rudabaugh’s horse took a hit in its guts, but the outlaws were able to gallop away safely, Billy having perfectly positioned himself in the rear of the group. Mason and the others then ran around to Garrett’s side of the building just in time to see a lone horseman coming slowly toward them across the snow. It was Folliard, who had turned his horse around after racing some 150 yards from the hospital building.
“Don’t shoot, Garrett,” Folliard pleaded. “I’m killed.”
“Take your medicine, old boy,” an excited Barney Mason shouted as he walked toward Folliard, “take your medicine.”
Garrett cautioned his friend that Folliard was not yet dead; the young outlaw could still pull a trigger, and he might very well want revenge. Garrett then called to Folliard to throw up his hands. He was not about to give the outlaw a chance to kill him. Folliard feebly replied that he was dying and could not even raise his hands. Powerless even to dismount on his own, Folliard begged to be helped off his horse so that he could lie down. A few of Garrett’s men, their guns drawn, stepped up to Folliard and gently pulled him off his mount and carried him inside, placing him on Jim East’s blanket. By candlelight, they examined his body and found that Garrett’s first bullet had punched through his chest just below his heart. Another slug had cut across the front of Folliard’s coat. When they removed his pistol, they found that it was at full cock. Folliard was just about to draw his weapon and had just cocked the hammer when Garrett’s first shot struck—the pistol had never left its holster.
Garrett did what he could to make Folliard comfortable. The posse members returned to their poker game. But as Folliard’s pain got worse, he begged Garrett to kill him. If Garrett was his friend, Folliard told the lawman, he would put him out of his misery. “I told him I was no friend to men of his kind, who sought to murder me because I tried to do my duty,” Garrett wrote later. Then, when Mason came into the room, the outlaw became panicked. Garrett surmised that Folliard feared Mason would be more than happy to end his misery. “Don’t shoot anymore, for God’s sake,” Folliard cried. “I’m already killed!” Mason again cruelly told Folliard to take his medicine, to which Folliard replied, “It’s the best medicine I ever took.”
Folliard requested that his grandmother back in Texas be informed of his death. “Oh my God, is it possible I must die?” he asked no one in particular. Then the outlaw began to curse.
“God damn you, Garrett; I hope to meet you in hell,” Folliard said.
“I would not talk that way, Tom,” Garrett said. “You are going to die in a few minutes.”
“The sooner the better. I will be out of pain.”
Folliard, groaning now, asked for water. Jim East brought him a drink, and after struggling to take a small sip, Folliard lay back onto his blanket, shuddered, and died. He had lived forty-five minutes after taking Garrett’s bullet.
AFTER GARRETT’S SURPRISE AT Fort Sumner, Billy, Rudabaugh, Bowdre, and Wilson rode their horses like hell to the Wilcox-Brazil ranch, twelve miles away. Just as they arrived, Rudabaugh’s horse collapsed and died from its wounds. Rudabaugh lost no time securing another mount, and after the fugitives quickly grabbed some grub from the ranch house, the four rode off into the nearby hills. Afraid that Garrett might be on their back trail, they spent the following day with their binoculars, carefully glassing the Wilcox-Brazil place and surrounding country from a safe distance. Failing to see any sign of Garrett, they returned to the ranch in the evening.
As Billy and the others rode up to the ranch house, they were surprised to see Tom Pickett crawl out of a haystack. Pickett, who was separated from the gang at Fort Sumner and scared out of his socks, had spurred and whipped his horse nonstop for twenty-five miles, until the poor animal, its tongue extended and a lathery sweat dripping from its body, tumbled to the ground and died. Pickett then walked more than twelve miles back to the Wilcox-Brazil place, where he hid himself in the haystack, praying his pals would show up soon—at least sooner than Garrett. As Pickett brushed himself off, he started going on about how he was sure he had nailed the man who had ordered them to throw up their hands back at Fort Sumner (Pickett never got off a shot). For the rest of the evening, the gang took turns guarding the place.
The outlaws initially suspected that Wilcox and Brazil were in on Garrett’s ambush scheme, but the ranchers finally convinced them otherwise. Tired and demoralized, they tried to figure out what to do next. Leery of making a move until they knew Garrett’s whereabouts, they decided to send another spy to Fort Sumner. They drafted Manuel Brazil for the job, and he left the ranch the next day. Brazil, of course, went straight to Garrett upon his arrival in Sumner. The outlaw bunch was all at his ranch, he told the lawman, and feeling rather dejected. Garrett then conspired with Brazil, telling the rancher to carry the news to the boys that he was at Sumner with only Barney Mason and three Hispanos, and that though he wanted to go back to Roswell, he was worried about leaving the safety of the plaza after having made the gang so mad by killing Tom Folliard.
As Brazil prepared to leave the next morning, December 22, Garrett went over the plans with the rancher. If the gang was still at his ranch, Brazil was to remain there. But, if the outlaws were either not there, or if they left a short time later, Brazil was to ride back to Sumner and report to Garrett. If Garrett did not hear from Brazil by 2:00 A.M., Garrett would assume the gang was still holed up at the ranch, and he and his posse would start out from Fort Sumner.
At midnight, Brazil rode back into Fort Sumner, his beard crusted over with icicles. The gang had left his place after supper, he reported. Garrett immediately ordered his men to mount up; they were going after the outlaws. The night was clear and bone cold, the type of cold that causes the snow to make a tight crunch sound with each step. Garrett sent Brazil on ahead (in case the gang had returned) while he and the posse pushed on to the Wilcox-Brazil place. Three miles from their destination, Garrett and his men met Brazil. The Kid and gang had not returned, he said, but he could easily show the posse the trail the outlaws had left behind. With four inches of snow on the ground and the moon high in the sky, Garrett had no trouble following the tracks Brazil pointed out to him. The tracks led east, and Garrett instantly knew where he would find the outlaws. About three miles beyond the Wilcox-Brazil ranch, at a place known as Stinking Spring, there was a small, one-room rock and adobe house that stood by itself on the edge of a wide arroyo. The dwelling had been built years before by a Hispanic sheepherder, but now it was abandoned. Garrett was convinced he would find the gang camped there for the night.
Well familiar with the country he was now leading his posse over, Garrett halted his men a half mile from Stinking Spring and cautioned them that silence was critical for them to trap Billy and the others. Then, when within four hundred yards of the rock house, Garrett divided his posse into two groups. By this point, it was 3:00 A.M. Leaving posse member Juan Roybal to hold the horses, Garrett circled around the side of the house with half his men and dropped into an arroyo, which allowed his party to creep up to within seventy-five yards of the front of the structure. Frank Stewart and the rest of the posse took up positions within two hundred yards of the building. The house, which was only twelve feet wide and thirty feet long, had a single narrow entrance and no door. Plainly visible in the moonlight, Garrett counted three horses tied up outside. Two horses, he reasoned, were sharing the small space with the gang. There were no sounds inside, and Garrett assumed that the outlaws were asleep with no idea what was waiting for them out in the cold.
Excited to finally have the Kid within his grasp, and sensing the kill, Garrett sent Stewart a message suggesting that they quietly slip in on the sleeping men, guns drawn, and then hold the outlaws until daylight. Posseman Lee Hall was all for the idea, but Frank Stewart was against such a bravado move. He would rather sit out in the freezing cold than run the risk of getting into a gunfight inside that small space. So, lying flat on their blankets in the snow, they waited for the dawn, which was more than three hours away—posse member Charlie Rudolph suffered frostbite to his feet before the whole thing was over. After what surely seemed an eternity to Garrett and the others, they finally saw the predawn glow rising in the east.
Billy had let it be known more than once that he would never be taken alive, and Garrett was perfectly willing to forgo any efforts to obtain his surrender. A dead Billy the Kid would be much less to worry about than a live one. Garrett had already told his men that if he saw the Kid, he was going to kill him. Garrett believed that once the Kid was gone, the rest of the gang would simply give up. The sheriff-elect had a good description of what the Kid was wearing, which included a distinctive sombrero. Garrett told his men that the signal to begin firing was when he raised his rifle to his shoulder.
Although it was not yet daybreak, it was light enough now for Garrett to easily make out the frigid faces of his men. They stared at the dark entrance to the house, trying to detect anything inside when, suddenly, a man appeared in the doorway holding a feedbag. There was the sombrero—he looked to be the Kid—he had to be the Kid. Garrett raised his rifle and drew a steady bead on the man. Seven shots broke the winter silence like claps of thunder, followed instantly by the loud slap of lead bullets slamming into flesh and bone. The man spun back into the building. The next thing the posse heard was Billy Wilson yelling that they had mortally wounded Charlie Bowdre and he wanted to come out. Garrett had sent the wrong man on his final journey.
All of Bowdre’s pals were wide awake now, and they realized how desperate their situation was. Billy looked at his friend, who was white as a ghost, deep-red blood soaking his clothing, and he heard someone outside shout that it was okay for Bowdre to come out—with his hands up. The Kid grabbed hold of Bowdre and tugged on his gunbelt until the holster was positioned just below Bowdre’s navel.
“They have murdered you, Charlie,” Billy said to his pal, “but you can get revenge. Kill some of the sons of bitches before you die.”
Bowdre stumbled out of the doorway, with his hands in the air. He took several steps toward the posse, looking across each man until he recognized Garrett. As he approached the lawman, Bowdre pointed back to the house. He tried to speak, but it was a struggle because blood was gurgling up with every breath: “I wish—I wish—I wish…,” he said. Then, as Garrett grabbed him, Bowdre whispered, “I’m dying!” A remorseful Garrett carefully laid Bowdre down on some blankets, and in the time it took the six-foot-four lawman to straighten back up, Charlie Bowdre was dead.
All eyes turned back to the rock house. Able to reach the tethers of the horses tied outside, the outlaws were trying to bring one of the horses in through the door. Billy’s plan was to mount up and make a mad dash out the narrow entrance—this was just the kind of hairbreadth escape the Kid was famous for. Garrett knew exactly what they were trying to do, and his first thought was to shoot the first horse’s lead rope in two, but it was swaying too much from the outlaws jerking at it. Ultimately he concluded that it was easier to kill the damn horse, and as the animal’s head and shoulders passed into the doorway, Garrett sent a bullet into its chest. The horse collapsed in its tracks, blocking the entrance and making it difficult to get another horse in or out, especially one with a rider on its back. To be sure, Garrett and his men shot the lead ropes of the other two horses, and they slowly walked away, their noses nuzzling the snow in search of grass.
At first, Billy was not sure who had them surrounded, because Manuel Brazil had fed them a good amount of false information. It came to them soon enough, however. Garrett hailed the Kid and asked him how he was “fixed in there.”
“Pretty well,” the Kid answered, “but we have no wood to get breakfast.”
“Come out and get some,” Garrett said. “Be a little sociable.”
“Can’t do it, Pat. Business is too confining. No time to run around.”
Garrett could not resist throwing some of Billy’s big talk back at him. (Brazil had told Garrett how the Kid had been eager to go after the lawman after the rancher informed him it was only Garrett, Mason, and three Hispanos back at Fort Sumner.)
“Didn’t you fellows forget a part of your program yesterday?” Garrett asked. “You know you were to come in on us at Fort Sumner, from some other direction, give us a square fight, set us afoot, and drive us down the Pecos.”
The Kid had no response. Garrett then told the outlaws the obvious: they were surrounded, there was no chance to get away, and they might as well come out and surrender. Garrett got a response this time—the Kid told him to go to hell.
Not long after that, the posse heard the sounds of digging and picking. The outlaws were using their knives and firearms to make gun ports in the walls of the house. Garrett directed Jim East and Tom Emory to shoot at the area of the wall where the sounds were coming from, and the digging stopped. As the hours passed, the posse periodically fired a shot or two into the doorway, just as a friendly reminder to the outlaws that they were still there.
At some point that morning, Garrett decided to get his men some breakfast. He took half the posse with him to the Wilcox-Brazil place, leaving the others to watch the house. When Manuel Brazil anxiously asked Garrett the news, the sheriff-elect was still kicking himself about Charlie Bowdre.
“I told him the news was bad,” Garrett wrote later, “that we had killed the very man we did not want to kill.”
What Brazil said next, however, caused Garrett to rethink Bowdre: “I don’t see why you should be sorry for having killed him. After you had the interview with him the other day, and was doing your best to get him out of his troubles, he said to me, as we were riding home, ‘I wish you would get that damned long-legged son of a bitch out to meet me once more. I would just kill him and end all this trouble!’ Now, how sorry are you?”
After breakfast, Garrett asked Wilcox to take one of his wagons and haul out to Stinking Spring some provisions, firewood, and forage for the horses. The Kid, Garrett knew, was stubborn enough to hold out in the rock house for a long time, all the while working his brain to come up with some kind of escape plan. The posse might as well be comfortable. When Garrett returned to the spring, Frank Stewart took the rest of the posse back for their turn at the breakfast table.
The hours passed with not a sound from the outlaws. At approximately 3:00 P.M., movement in the doorway of the house excited the posse, but it was only the two horses that had been inside with the outlaws, one of which was the Kid’s noted bay mare, beautiful and fast. Having abandoned a mounted getaway, the outlaws were turning the horses loose. The horses hopped over the dead beast in the doorway and were taken in by the posse. An hour later, the wagon arrived with the provisions.
Garrett had the men build a big fire and told them to get a meal going. Soon, the smell of flame-roasted beef drifted in the direction of the rock house, and the outlaws, who had not eaten or had a drop of water all day, received a strong whiff—the gang quickly began to weaken. The Kid tried to convince Rudabaugh, Wilson, and Pickett to hold out longer, at least until dark, but they voted to surrender. Billy, disgusted, called them a bunch of cowards, but his rants did not change their minds. Dave Rudabaugh tied a dirty rag to the end of a Winchester and shoved it up through the old chimney and yelled out that they wanted to surrender.
Garrett told them to come on out with their hands up, but only Rudabaugh walked out the door. He walked up to Garrett and said the whole bunch would surrender if Garrett promised to protect them. Garrett gave his word and Rudabaugh went back inside. After an anxious few minutes, a scruffy-looking foursome, their hands up, stepped across the dead horse and through the doorway. Billy was the last to walk out. This was the first time that most of the men in the posse had laid eyes on the notorious rustler. Garrett, still just a deputy sheriff, was about to fulfill his promise to the people of Lincoln County to bring the notorious outlaw to justice.
“Kill the son of a bitch,” Barney Mason shouted, pointing his gun at the Kid. “He is slippery and may get away.”
But East and Lee Hall had heard Garrett’s surrender terms and threatened to kill Mason if he fired a shot. Mason lowered his weapon. Garrett’s reaction to this incident is not recorded, but he surely recognized that his friend was acting out of fear of what the Kid might do to him if he ever got the chance.
The Kid never really got over the humiliating surrender at Stinking Spring. “If it hadn’t been for the dead horse in the doorway I wouldn’t be here,” he later told a Las Vegas newspaper reporter. “I would have ridden out on my bay mare and taken my chances of escaping. But I couldn’t ride out over that, for she would have jumped back, and I would have got it in the head.”
ONCE THE GANG WAS disarmed and fed, they were taken to the Wilcox-Brazil place. Garrett then sent Brazil, Mason, and Rudolph back for Bowdre’s body. Both the posse and the prisoners spent the night at the ranch headquarters, where the possemen took turns watching the prisoners, two guards at a time. Garrett’s orders were that if any of the prisoners tried anything, they were to be shot. After breakfast the next morning, the entire entourage—including Bowdre’s corpse—departed for the Pecos, arriving at Fort Sumner before noon. It was Christmas Eve. As Garrett’s party neared the Indian Hospital, Manuela Bowdre ran out in the snow to confront them.
She frantically looked for her husband with the other prisoners, and then she saw one of Garrett’s men riding her husband’s horse. The men driving the wagon with Bowdre’s body did not want to deal with the visibly angry woman and drove on past her. As Manuela screamed and cussed at Garrett, the two men stopped the wagon, took hold of Bowdre’s body, and carried it into his widow’s quarters and laid it out on a table. When Garrett finally got an opportunity to speak, he told Manuela to go to the store and pick out a suit of clothes for her husband. He would pay for it, and he would pay to have the man buried as well.
The prisoners were taken to the blacksmith shop to be fitted with irons, but, because of a lack of materials or time, only Billy and Rudabaugh were shackled and chained. Wilson and Pickett, obviously deemed the two least dangerous members of the gang, went without irons for the time being. The Kid and Rudabaugh were then led across the plaza to a long, two-story structure that had once served as officers’ quarters but now housed the Maxwell family. Garrett had been approached by Deluvina Maxwell, the Maxwell’s Navajo servant, with a message from Mrs. Luz Beaubien Maxwell. Would Garrett permit the Kid to be brought to their residence so that her daughter, sixteen-year-old Paulita, could tell the Kid good-bye? The nice-looking sister of Pete Maxwell was not the only Fort Sumner female Billy had wooed in recent months, but she had become his favorite, and the young lady was equally taken with him. Garrett acquiesced, but he told Jim East and Lee Hall, the two guards, to keep a close watch on the Kid.
Before the prisoners and their escort reached the Maxwell place, the shackle on Rudabaugh’s ankle somehow broke loose. “That is a bad sign,” Billy said. “I will die and Dave will go free.” He was not joking—the Kid, it seems, had a superstitious streak. After the prisoners entered the house, Mrs. Maxwell politely asked the guards if they would release Billy so that Paulita and the Kid could say their good-byes privately in another room. East and Hall said no—they had worked too hard to catch the outlaw, and it would take more than these women’s transparent machinations to get him away from them now.
“The lovers embraced,” East wrote later, “and she gave Billy one of those soul kisses the novelists tell us about.”
After a few respectful moments, the guards pulled Paulita and the Kid apart and then escorted the prisoners to Garrett, who was ready to leave for Las Vegas.
With the fighting over and what was left of the gang well in charge, Garrett and Stewart no longer needed the entire posse. It was decided that Barney Mason, Jim East, and Tom Emory would accompany them; the rest of the men were dismissed. The prisoners were loaded into a two-mule wagon loaned by Brazil, who also served as the vehicle’s driver, and with the slapping of the reins and a couple of sucking clicks from Brazil’s clenched jaw, the entire cavalcade departed Fort Sumner, the Kid and Rudabaugh laughing and chatting as if they were on a Sunday stroll. In fact, over the next few days, Garrett learned a lot about Billy Bonney. Tom Pickett, on the other hand, seemed worried, and Billy Wilson was withdrawn and dejected. The wagon made for slow going in the snow, but by about 8:00 P.M., Garrett’s party had reached John Gerhardt’s ranch, twenty-five miles up the Pecos, and stopped for the night. Twelve hours later, the men were back on the road, arriving at Padre Polaco’s Puerto de Luna store at 2:00 P.M. It was Christmas day, and the jolly Padre Polaco served Garrett, his men, and the prisoners a hearty meal.
The Christmas dinner was served in shifts, and Jim East was the first to guard the prisoners. East and the prisoners were sequestered in a long adobe room in the store building. Its single door was locked, and Garrett had the key in his pocket. East sat on a woodpile near the door, facing the prisoners, who were gathered around the fire-place at the opposite end of the room. After a bit of small talk, the Kid asked East if he had anything to smoke. The guard replied that he did, to which the Kid responded that he had some rolling papers. East got ready to throw the tobacco to the Kid, but the outlaw offered to come over and get it, and with that, he and Rudabaugh started for the guard’s end of the room. They were halfway across the open space when East shouted to them:
“Hold on, Billy, if you come any farther I am going to shoot you.”
The prisoners kept coming; East leveled his gun at them.
“Hold on, Billy, if you make another step I’ll shoot you.”
The prisoners hesitated.
“You are the most suspicious damned man I ever saw,” Billy said, feigning disgust, and then he and Rudabaugh turned around and walked to the fireplace.
East pitched the tobacco over to the Kid, but he picked it up and tossed it right back; Billy did not want East’s damn tobacco.
Garrett was able to get Wilson and Pickett fitted with irons at Puerto de Luna, and later that afternoon, the party started again for Las Vegas. They traveled all through the night and rode into the San Miguel County seat about 4:00 P.M. on December 26. Not in their wildest dreams could these trail-worn westerners have imagined the excitement and extreme curiosity their arrival generated. It was as if the circus had come to town with horses prancing, elephants trumpeting, and clowns frolicking. Indeed, with Garrett as the taciturn lion tamer and Billy the Kid as the caged-beast-that-cannot-be-tamed, it had all the makings of the greatest show on earth—or a tragedy for the ages.