The Top 5 Most Notorious Outlaws (6 page)

‘’Billy never talked much of the past. He was always looking into the future.” – Frank Coe

Not surprisingly, the legends surrounding what happened next are just as colorful. One story said that Henry made it to Camp Thomas in Arizona territory, where he shot and killed a buffalo soldier with a shotgun, then took off on a stolen horse. Given that Camp Thomas did not exist yet, that story is not true.  There are also other wild tales of Billy the Kid roaming the country, slaughtering Indians and brawling in New York City.  The most likely story is that he got help from Clara Truesdell, the closet thing that Henry had to a mother at the time. Chauncey Truesdell said that his mother washed and dried Henry’s clothes and gave him food. After he spent the night on the floor, Mrs. Truesdell put Henry on a stagecoach to Clifton, a mining town in the mountains of southeast Arizona.

Clifton was named for Henry Clifton, a prospector who made his way to Southern Arizona from Prescott to mine for gold and instead found copper ore. This Henry was not there to mine, though. He went to Clifton to find his stepfather, but when he found William and told him the story, Antrim refused to help. With nothing left to do, Henry stole clothes and a gun from his stepfather’s room and never saw him again.

Over the next two years, Henry bounced from place to place in Arizona, perhaps earning money at a cattle ranch or the gambling halls.  In the spring of 1876, Henry heard that there was better opportunity to make money off of the soldiers at the card tables in Camp Grant, north of Tucson. Using a horse he stole from a soldier at Camp Goodwin, Henry left for Fort Grant.

Fort Grant in the late 19
th
century

At Fort Grant, Henry began to make a name for himself as gambler and an outlaw who was particularly adept at stealing horses. He started to wear a pinky ring, which many superstitious gamblers wore for luck, and he dressed in brightly colored scarves. When he earned enough money, he bought a six-shooter. For most men of the West, a gun was a necessity, but it was even truer for the teenager that now was called Kid Antrim, a playful reference to his small physique and lack of facial hair. Indeed, Kid Antrim was smaller than most of the men he encountered and needed an equalizer.

It seems Kid Antrim’s first opportunity to use his six-shooter came on August 17, 1877 when he crossed paths with a bully named Windy Cahill. Taking note of Henry’s small stature, Cahill amused himself by slapping Henry around until he had him down on the ground. Henry yelled for Cahill to let him up, but he wouldn’t, so Henry freed his arm and reached for his holster. He fired his gun into Cahill’s stomach. He may have been able to make a case of self-defense, but not wanting to take the chance, Henry took off, leaving Cahill to die later that night.

On the run again, Henry changed his name to one of his most notorious monikers, William H. Bonney. Henry was now Billy. He rode a stolen horse out of Arizona and back to New Mexico. He survived the harsh late summer heat with the help of Mexican ranchers out in the open range, who took him in and gave him a meal when he needed to eat.  Mexicans had owned land in New Mexico for generations, but an influx of British and Irish immigrants was changing that. Like many, they viewed the West as the land of opportunity and came to the United States with money to spend. They invested in railroads, mining, and cattle ranches, but what they really wanted was land. With the assistance of corrupt bankers and an equally corrupt law enforcement system, many wealthy immigrants were able to take the land right out from under the Mexicans.

Such was the case with Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan. In Fort Stanton, New Mexico in 1866, Murphy went into business with Emil Fritz and the two men opened L.G. Murphy & Co., a store and brewery.  Through government contracts, the company became the supplier of vegetables and meat to Fort Stanton and the Mescalero-Apache Reservation. Murphy and Fritz then sold land that they did not really own to local farmers. When farmers were not able to pay back their loans, Murphy and Fritz foreclosed on the land and took the cattle and crops. They then turned around and used the cattle and crops to fulfill the obligations of their government contracts. A group of local politicians from Santa Fe, known as “The Ring,” were in on the scheme and made sure that Murphy and Fritz did not have to worry about legal problems.

The good times at Fort Stanton came to an end for Murphy and Fritz in September 1873. Murphy had hired a fiery-tempered James Dolan, another Irishman, to work as a clerk in the store. Dolan got into a conflict with a local soldier and tried to shoot and kill him. With complaints about price gouging and shorting the Indians on supply orders already circulating, L.G. Murphy & Co. was evicted from Fort Stanton. Meanwhile, Fritz sold his interest in the company to Murphy and returned to Germany after being diagnosed with kidney disease.

However, the government contracts remained intact, allowing Murphy to build a new store in Lincoln County. Dolan bought into the business in 1874, and Murphy and Dolan Mercantile and Banking soon had a stranglehold on the economy of Lincoln County. The large two-story building, which became the Lincoln County Courthouse in 1930, was nicknamed “The House,” which also came to reference Murphy, Dolan, and their crew of corrupt politicians and members of law enforcement. Now working with Fort Sumner, The House picked up right where it left off in Fort Stanton, investing in railroads, cattle, and land. If a business transaction occurred in Lincoln County, it is highly likely that Murphy and Dolan were involved.

Murphy was also an alcoholic, drinking to the point that he was not a factor in the war that was developing between the Irish and British in Lincoln County. In March 1877, the face of the business changed when Murphy was diagnosed with colon cancer. The worse the pain got, the more Murphy drank. Murphy and Dolan had already taken on a new business partner, John Riley, in the fall. With Murphy facing terminal illness, he sold his stake in the company to Dolan and Riley and the business changed to Jas. J. Dolan & Co. Lawrence Murphy spent the last year of his life getting treatment for cancer in Santa Fe.

“At least two-hundred men have been killed in Lincoln County during the past three years, but I did not kill all of them.” – Billy the Kid

It was about this same time that Billy arrived in town. He had joined forces with a gang of ex-soldiers and assorted desperadoes at an abandoned army post called Apache Tejo, south of Silver City. Former cavalry sergeant John Kinney was the boss of the gang, called The Boys, but the leader of the pack was Jesse Evans. Under his lead, The Boys stole cattle, horses, or whatever else Kinney needed to make a profit. As much as Billy the Kid came to be known as a notorious outlaw, Evans was much more feared during his lifetime. The Boys would not hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way. It was also understood that the gang was on the secret payroll of Dolan and Company, stealing horses and providing guns for hire to The House.

Jesse Evans

New Mexico was the site of a brutal land war between the English and the Irish, and Billy the Kid now found himself right in the middle of it. Lincoln County was the largest county in the entire country, covering about a quarter of the state, and it was rampant with greed and corruption. Disputes were settled with guns, and most of the gunmen were never punished. Much of the land was either unsurveyed public land or the product of Spanish land grants, issued years before white men entered the territory. Its remote location also contributed to the lawlessness of the region. Despite its sparse population, New Mexico accounted for 15 percent of the murders in the United States in the 1870s. The Civil War had made many men immune to the horrors of death.

Early 1877 not only brought Billy to Lincoln County, but it also brought competition to The House. A trio comprised of Alexander McSween from Scotland, John Tunstall from England, and John Chisum from Texas formed an alliance with the goal of creating their own financial empire. They established their own bank and store not far from The House; clearly, the Irishmen did not intimidate Tunstall. He wrote a letter to his father in England in April 1877 and explained that in order to succeed in New Mexico, a man needed to be part of “a ring.” He was building his own ring and it was his intention to “get half of every dollar that is made in the county by anyone.” He set his goal as three years, but within a year, both he and McSween would be dead.

Billy’s first encounter with Tunstall was shortly after he stole his horses in 1877 in Rio Feliz, about 30 miles south of Lincoln County. He was put into the earthen pit that served as the county jail, but instead of pressing charges against him, Tunstall offered Billy an opportunity to work for him instead. The “ring” that he told his father about needed men like the Kid and the Kid was grateful to get out of jail, so he accepted.

Tunstall was far from a saint. After all, he was trying to do the same thing that Dolan was doing. However, he treated his men well, and the Kid felt loyal to him. He said that Tunstall was the only one that treated him like a decent human being. For the first time in a long time, Billy had steady work, a place to sleep, and regular meals. As was typical for him, he was attracted to any semblance of a home that he could find.

Early in 1878, Tunstall and McSween ran into money problems, brought on by a civil suit for $10,000 filed by The House. William Brady was the first sheriff of Lincoln County, and though he proved himself to be a capable lawman, he was also close to his fellow Irishman and also deeply in debt to them. When it came time to issue a fake court order for the livestock from Tunstall’s ranch, it was Brady who gladly led a posse to ride out to the ranch to issue the order.

The bad blood that boiled between the Irish and the British in Europe now carried over to the wide-open spaces of New Mexico. Survivors of the Irish potato famine would have no mercy on a Brit. Irish Catholics were not allowed, under British rule, to purchase land. They were permitted only to rent small plots of land from the British and most Irish peasants chose to grow potatoes because they could grow three times as many potatoes as grain on their small plots. One acre of potatoes could feed a family for a year. However, in 1845, fungus devastated most of the potato crops and with the British slow to provide relief, nearly a million Irish starved and died from disease. Two million others were forced to emigrate to Great Britain, the U.S., and Canada, just as Catherine McCarty did. The House was not going to allow an Englishman to take what they worked so hard to get.

On February 18, 1878, Tunstall rounded a group of his men, including the Kid, to ride into town to challenge the claim on his property. Along the way, he saw Brady and his posse, and thinking this was a chance to discuss the situation, rode up to Brady. His men, meanwhile, were chasing a flock of wild turkey, leaving Tunstall alone. Tunstall’s men yelled for Tunstall to take cover when they saw Buck Morton point his shotgun at him and shoot him in the chest before he could even get out of the saddle. Another of Brady’s posse, Tom Hill then walked over to Tunstall as he lay bleeding in the dirt, took his pistol, and shot him in the back of the head. An investigator later implicated Jesse Evans in the shooting as well. The final move was to shoot Tunstall’s horse. Brady’s men covered Tunstall with a blanket and put his bloody topcoat under his head, as if for a pillow. They put Tunstall’s hat under the horse’s head.

The Kid and the rest of Tunstall’s men watched horrified from the cover of the nearby rocks and trees. When Tunstall’s body was laid out in McSween’s parlor, Billy approached the dead man and said, “I’ll get some of them before I die.” McSween was a lawyer, though, and wanted to take a lawful approach to getting revenge for his partner’s death. Knowing that most of law enforcement was on The House’s payroll, McSween obtained an arrest warrant for Sheriff Brady and his posse from the justice of the peace, John B. Wilson.

The Kid and Fred Waite were deputized, and along with Constable Atanacio Martinez, who was not very eager to be party to arresting Sheriff Brady, went to Dolan’s store to serve the warrants. Brady and other associates of The House greeted them, guns drawn. Instead of arresting Brady and his crew, Billy and his men were taken at gunpoint to the county jail, where they remained until after Tunstall’s funeral.  

McSween tried to enlist the help of authorities to investigate not only the murder of Tunstall, but also what amounted to an organized crime syndicate led by Dolan. However, when one of the Kid’s friends, Rob Widenmann, claimed that Dolan tried to have him poisoned, it merely added fuel to the fire, and it was evident that the violence was not about to end. Under investigation for embezzlement anyway – charges of which he was later cleared - McSween wrote his will and took off to the mountains with his wife.

With McSween on the run, Squire Wilson appointed Dick Brewer, Tunstall’s foreman, as a “special constable” with the authority to make arrests. Brewer formed a posse, the Regulators, which included the Kid, Charlie Bowdre, and several other men, including some Mexican-Americans who wanted to fight The House. At times, the Regulators had as many as 60 men under its umbrella. Acting as a lawfully appointed posse, the Regulators operated for five months with the sole intent of avenging the death of John Tunstall. Many claimed that of all of the Regulators, the Kid was the most loyal and he was present for every gun battle that took place.

In March 1878, about one month after Tunstall’s murder, the Regulators found Buck Morton, the man who shot Tunstall out of his saddle, and two other men. It’s been claimed that Morton surrendered only on the condition that his captors would promise to bring him back alive to Lincoln. Dick Brewer assured the prisoners they would reach Lincoln alive, and when other members of the posse argued in favor of killing them, one of the Regulators, William McCloskey, argued against it.

3 days later, on March 9, 1878, Morton, Baker and William McCloskey were all dead. It’s been assumed that they were shot because the Regulators assumed if they took the men to Sheriff Brady he would just let them go. The Regulators insisted that Morton and Baker had tried to escape and shot McCloskey in the process, but most were skeptical that Morton would shoot his one friend. They also figured it was no coincidence that Morton and Baker had been shot 11 times, once for each Regulator in the posse. On top of that, Tom Hill and Jesse Evans, who had also been part of Tunstall’s murder, were also shot while trying to steal sheep. Hill died and Evans was badly wounded.

While the vigilante justice was carrying itself out on March 9, on that same day Governor Samuel Axtell rode into Lincoln County to investigate, per the request of Brady, who described the situation in Lincoln County as “anarchy.” Federal troops from Fort Stanton were put on alert, and Axtell cancelled Squire Wilson’s appointment as justice of the peace and revoked Widenmann’s duties as deputy marshal. By doing so, he removed any legal authority that the Regulators had, turning them into a band of outlaw vigilantes.

Late in the evening of March 31, the Regulators launched their plan to get Brady. The Kid and five other men snuck into town and hid behind an adobe wall in a corral near Tunstall’s store. The next morning, as Brady left the Dolan store, the Regulators unleashed at least a dozen rounds of gunfire and killed him in the muddy street. A deputy was also killed. For unknown reasons, the Kid and another man named Jim French ran to Brady’s body, perhaps looking for warrants or a gun. A shot came from a nearby house and went through the Kid’s thigh and into French’s leg, but they were both able to escape.

Sheriff Brady

With the cold-blooded assassination of their sheriff, the Regulators lost sympathy from many in the town. They were now viewed as murderers and no better than The House. The Regulators went back to San Patricio, the tiny community on the Ruidoso River that served as their headquarters. The Kid and French recovered from their wounds, and the Regulators picked up new men to join the crew before moving up the river and into the mountains on April 4. Their destination was Blazer’s Mill, located on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation in the Tularosa Creek canyon. The Regulators heard that men who were involved in Tunstall’s murder were there and Brewer planned to serve his arrest warrants, whether they were valid or not.

The small settlement called Blazer’s Mill belonged to a dentist named Joseph Blazer, who leased a two-story adobe house to the federal government, where Indian agent Frederick Godfroy and his wife lived. The Godfroys took in lodgers and Mrs. Godfroy ran a small restaurant, known for its hearty meals. While the Regulators were enjoying the hot meal, Buckshot Roberts rode into town, possibly to see if a check he was waiting for had arrived. Roberts wanted no more to do with the Lincoln County War and was in the process of selling his ranch. He also had ridden in the posse that killed Tunstall.

When the Regulators spotted Roberts, it left neither side with very little choice of what to do. If the Regulators simply left, Roberts would chase them down and shoot them. If Roberts tried to leave, the Regulators would kill him. Frank Coe, one of the Regulators who knew Roberts the best, tried to talk him into surrendering, but Roberts would not agree to that.

Meanwhile, Dick Brewer grew impatient and led his posse, including the Kid, out of the dining room, and toward Roberts and Coe. Both Roberts and Charlie Bowdre fired simultaneously, touching off the gunfight. Roberts was almost immediately shot in the stomach, a mortal wound, but he managed to keep firing from his Winchester at the Regulators as he headed for the doorway of Blazer’s house. In the process, Middleton was hit in the chest, Frank Coe’s cousin George had his trigger finger blown off, and Doc Scurlock had a graze wound. When Billy the Kid realized Roberts had fired all his bullets, he ran up to kill Roberts, only to be beaten unconscious by the barrel of Roberts’ gun.

Roberts managed to get into the house and barricade himself, now using another rifle that belonged to Blazer to keep shooting. The Regulators, however, were stunned by the carnage that had been inflicted by Roberts. As most of the posse began to care for their own, Brewer moved around the house and started firing into the room in which Roberts was laying down. Seeing the smoke from Brewer’s gun rising behind the log pile Brewer was hiding behind, Roberts waited for Brewer to stick his head out. As soon as Brewer did, Roberts let off a shot that hit Brewer in the eye and tore off much of his head with it.